Court Opinion

ID: 9549161
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:14:18.720703+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:19:56.084811
License: Public Domain

BERRY, Justice
(dissenting).
The majority opinion affirms the judgment entered by the district court on trial de novo, admitting the questioned will to probate, upon two grounds: (1) testator did not lack testamentary capacity; (2) determination of whether a will is the product of an insane delusion is a question of fact which was determined properly in the present case.
As to the first ground, it may be conceded there was sufficient competent evidence to support the finding that testator possessed testamentary capacity. At this point we note the majority statement that two courts found testator did not suffer from an insane delusion. It is noteworthy that the probate court made no finding upon this question, despite contestant’s amendment of their grounds of contest in an effort to present such issue.
Despite evidence bearing upon the issue, the probate court sustained the will solely upon the stated ground:
“It is the opinion of the court that the testator possessed a requisite amount of mental capacity at the time of execution of the will, and the contestants have failed to prove a lack of testamentary capacity.”
Decisional law generally recognizes that testamentary capacity may exist although the testator may be suffering from some insane delusion which will destroy validity of the will. 94 C.J.S. Wills § 18.
The majority opinion likewise deals with the principles that adjudication of incompetency, or of insanity, do not consti*498tute evidence of mental incapacity. Since these matters are not germane to the present inquiry, they cannot be considered as supporting the conclusion reached. In my opinion Syllabus 1 and 4 have no application to the present case.
The majority opinion falls into the same error made by the trial court in seeking to sustain the order of the probate court. This results from misconception of the question of whether testator labored under an insane delusion, since the problem is considered from the standpoint of testator’s feelings toward members of his family as disclosed by the evidence. The existence of an insane delusion was not predicated upon the claim or evidence of testator’s feelings toward his family engendered by their participation in his prior hospitalization. The asserted insane delusion was that the will resulted from his belief the defendant fraternal organization should be the object of his bounty, for the oft-declared reason this organization had secured his release from confinement in a state mental hospital.
In Syllabus 1 of Winn v. Dolezal, Okl., 355 P.2d 859, quoted in the majority opinion, we defined “an insane delusion”. In In re Robertson’s Estate, 199 Okl. 582, 189 P.2d 615, Syllabus 2 states this test:
“2. The test as to validity of will executed by testator laboring under insane delusion, is not whether testator had general testamentary capacity, but whether insane delusion materially affected the will.”
In In re Williams’ Estate, 207 Okl. 209, 249 P.2d 94, Syllabus '3 states:
“3. To defeat a will on ground that a testator lacked testamentary capacity, it is not sufficient, merely to establish that the testator was a victim of some delusion, but the evidence must go further and establish that the will itself was the product of that delusion and that the testator devised his property in a way . which, except for that delusion, ■ he would not have done.”
To-this s'ame' effect see In re Mason’s Estate, 185 Okl. 278, 91 P.2d 657; In re Wheeling’s Estate, 198 Okl. 81, 175 P.2d 317.
An enlightening definition of an insane delusion appears in In re Cook’s Estate, 63 Ariz. 78, 159 P.2d 797, at 802:
“[T]he conception óf a disordered mind "which imagines fácts to exist of which there is no evidence and the belief in which is adhered to- against all-evidence and argument to the contrary,- and which cannot be accounted for on any reasonable hypothesis.”
The cited decisions adequately define the' legal measuring devices' for determination of the only issue involved. The testimony of Dr. C. (testator’s attending physician since 1940) establishes without contradiction that testator was afflicted with “a persecution complex of a paranoid praecox.” The evidence unequivocally establishes that the testator imagined the organization had secured his release from the hospital, although the uncontroverted evidence showed this to be untrue. The testator adhered to this belief despite all argument and evidence to the contrary. Had the testator not labored under such delusion it would have been a simple matter to have ascertained the truth regarding his belief, which certainly “could not be accounted for under any reasonable hypothesis”. This was not merely a mistake as to the facts, but rather was a belief in a state of facts which did not exist, and' which a rational person could not believe existed. In Re Robertson’s Estate, supra.
The sole remaining ■ question is whether such insane delusion materially affected the'terms of the questioned will. Not an iota of evidence in this record appears to support the conclusion that, absent his expressed delusion, testator rationally would have considered the , lodge as the proper object of his bounty to exclusion of his own blood. No support can be found for an'attempted conclusion that the terms of the will were not affected materially by testator’s insane delusion. . .
*499It is my opinion the decision of the majority not only results in a miscarriage of justice in the present case, but that long-standing rules of law which should be controlling in such situations are effectively emasculated by determining the issue involved as a pure question of fact.
I dissent.