Court Opinion

ID: 9529115
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:47:42.751312+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:27:40.941230
License: Public Domain

*405Finley, J.
(concurring in the result) — The letter Anna C. Witzig wrote to the Ferrises in September, 1946, is quoted in part in the majority opinion. Giving the language of the letter its ordinary meaning, it seems to me that Anna Witzig primarily was advising the Ferrises that employment possibilities were excellent in the city of Seattle, and that, by moving to Seattle, the Ferrises would have a very good opportunity to improve their mode of life substantially and immediately. The letter inferred that living together in the Witzig home in Seattle would be advantageous to both families; and finally, it suggested, I think as a probability rather than a certainty, that whoever was living with them would get the property which the Witzigs owned when they passed away. I do not think the language of the letter justifies an assumption (a) that Anna Witzig was to be restricted during her lifetime as to the use, control, and disposition of her property, or (b) that she would be bound irrevocably to leave to the Ferrises all of the property the Witzigs owned on the date of the letter, or the property that Anna Witzig would own at the time of her death. In other words, I do not think the letter clearly established a contract to devise property.
Assuming for the moment, however, that the letter did spell out some contractual obligation on the part of the Witzigs to devise property, I could not agree that Anna Witzig’s gift of five thousand dollars to the Blumhardts constituted fraud in violation of her contractual obligations to the Ferrises. I reach this conclusion because the purpose of the gift was to enable the Blumhardts to acquire a larger home so that Anna Witzig could live with them for extended periods of time, and she apparently did so. Certainly, if Anna Witzig had spent five thousand dollars on a world cruise for herself and some congenial companion of her own sex, it would seem to me that nothing in the letter of September, 1946, would have prevented this. The gift to the Blumhardts should be viewed in the same light.
For the reasons indicated, I concur in the result reached by the majority.