Court Opinion

ID: 3308851
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2016-07-05 17:22:44.739273+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:29:47.175526
License: Public Domain

I dissent, and think that the order appealed from should be reversed. In my opinion the language of section 1322 of the Code of Civil Procedure, "all wills duly proven and allowed in any other of the United States, or in any foreign country or state may be allowed and recorded," etc., is entirely too clear and explicit to leave any room for the play of construction. The fact that the section is preceded by the sub-heading "Probate of Foreign Wills" is not sufficient to overcome the unmistakable meaning of the language of the section. Indeed, the word "foreign" does not necessarily mean in law a country other than a sister state of the American Union. In the majority of instances it includes such sister states, and this view of its meaning is so well established as to have gone into the text-books and law dictionaries as settled law. In "Words and Phrases Judicially Defined" (vol. 3, p. 2881) it is said: "For all national purposes embraced by the federal constitution, the states and the citizens thereof are one, united under the same sovereign authority, and governed by the same laws. In all other respects the states are necessarily foreign and independent of each other; their constitutions and forms of government being (though republican) altogether different, as are their laws and institutions." In Bouvier's Law Dictionary (vol. 1, p. *Page 122 
811) it is said: "The several states of the American Union are foreign to each other with respect to their municipal laws." In Abbott's Dictionary (vol. 1, p. 514) it is said: "In American usage the several states of the Union are foreign to each other with respect to matters governed by their municipal laws; while the relations of the general government and either state are domestic. This consideration qualifies the usage of several of the phrases mentioned under the present head. It is abundantly well settled that a bill of exchange drawn in one state, payable in another, is a foreign bill. The corporations created by one state are constantly called foreign corporations in any other. In each state the judgments rendered in, and laws enacted by, another state are foreign judgments and laws. A port of another state is a foreign port." Therefore the word "foreign," in the subheading, is not at all inconsistent with the language of the section in question. And, of course, the legislature has full power over the whole subject of wills, descents, distribution of estates, and probate proceedings. There is not a word in the state constitution limiting its legislative authority in such matters.