Court Opinion

ID: 9600214
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:25:08.419286+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:04:41.589963
License: Public Domain

ANDERSON, Justice,
with whom KEE-TON, Justice, concurs
(dissenting).
In my opinion, the facts in the authorities cited and relied upon by the majority opinion are so different from the facts of the case now before us as to clearly distinguish such authorities and make their holdings inapplicable here. In addition to the facts set out in the majority opinion, there was a specific devise of certain real property to testatrix’ daughter, Mary Halfmoon (Moore) in addition to naming her as the residuary devisee and legatee.
As the majority opinion states, the cases dealing with pretermitted heirs are numerous; but, surprisingly, they are nearly all cases where the will made no mention of the heir in question. The only case squarely in point on the facts and under a nearly-identical statute, called to our attention or found by independent research, is the case of Faucher v. Bouchard, 47 R.I. 150, 131 A. 556, 557. In the Rhode Island case, the testator, Octave Bouchard, had made a will leaving a certain devise of land to the children of a deceased son, Damase Bou-chard. Two months after making this will, testator sold the land in question to a third party. The question was whether the children of the deceased son had any interest in the testator’s estate. The court, in answering this question, said:
“We answer the first question in the negative. General Laws 1923, c. 298, § 22, provides that when a testator omits to provide in his will for any of his children or for the issue of a deceased child, they shall take the same share of his estate that they would have been entitled to if he had died intestate, unless it appears that the omission was intentional and not occasioned by accident or mistake. Two months after making his will, testator sold the land devised by the third clause, to Marie Bouchard, the widow of his son Damase. The grandchildren claim there is an omission to provide for them in the will because they receive nothing thereunder. The ‘omission to provide’ of the statute refers to a provision made in the will, not to *254the actual receipt of property by the children or issue of a deceased child. The devise in the third clause was to the son’s widow and her children. The latter received nothing, not because of an omission in the will, but by a failure of the devise due to the subsequent act of the testator. The only conclusion from the facts is that testator intended that the grandchildren mentioned in his will should take nothing under the will.”
See 26 C.J.S., Descent and Distribution, § 45(c), p. 1050, and note 40; also 170 A.L.R. 1317 note, 1319 note, 1330(3), “What, other than express disinheritance or bequest, avoids application of statute for benefit of pretermitted or after-born children.”
Our statutes, I.C. secs. 14-317 and 14-320, which are set out verbatim in the majority opinion, were taken from California, and were identical with the California statutes at the time of the decision in the California case of In re Callaghan’s Estate, 119 Cal. 571, 51 P. 860, 861, 39 L.R.A. 689.
The Supreme Court of California, in construing their statute relative to pretermitted heirs, held that where a testatrix devised to her granchildren land which she did not own at the time nor at any subsequent time, the grandchildren were not entitled to share in her estate as if she had died intestate. The court in its opinion stated:
“ * * * The words ‘omits to provide,’ as used in said section, mean simply an omission to make a provision in the will, and have no reference to the pecuniary value of such provision. It is apparent that the Code provision in question expresses no intent to in any way limit the disposing power of the testator, or compel him to provide for any child; for it clearly provides how the testator may decline to give anything to any such relative. This being so, what is the object of the provision? Nearly all the states have provisions substantially the same as that here under consideration; and, as such a provision is not intended as a limitation of the power of a person to dispose of his property by will, it has been uniformly held that the provision applies only to a case where a child or descendant is unknown or forgotten, or for some reason unintentionally overlooked. * * * In the case at bar the appellants were not only mentioned, but an express specific provision was made for them in the body of the will; and there can, therefore, be no pretense that they were unknown, forgotten, or unintentionally overlooked.”
Neither of these cases has been overruled or criticized as not being the law in any subsequent case as far as I have been able to ascertain. The Callaghan case has beén cited repeatedly, in California and else*255where. Among cases citing it with approval are In re Carter’s Estate, 49 Cal.App.2d 251, 121 P.2d 540; In re Trickett’s Estate, 197 Cal. 20, 239 P. 406, 408; In re Benolken’s Estate, Mont., 205 P.2d 1141, 1146, 1149; In re Parrott’s Estate, 45 Nev. 318, 203 P. 258, 264; Shackelford v. Washburn, 180 Ala. 168, 60 So. 318, 319, 43 L.R.A., N.S., 1195.
In Kinnear v. Langley, 209 Ark. 878, 192 S.W.2d 978, the decedent had left a will providing that certain of her property should revert to the estate of her husband, and be distributed as provided in his will. The husband’s will made provision for plaintiff, an adopted daughter. By a codicil, the decedent revoked the section referring to her husband’s will, and left the property in question to another person. Plaintiff claimed to be a pretermitted child. The court ruled against her, stating, 192 S.W.2d at page 983:
“ * * * the codicil does not physically or literally erase or obliterate whatever it affects or changes in the original will. * * * The revoked section is not obliterated: it is merely rendered nugatory.
“ * * * Mrs. Burdick named Hazel Burdick (by reference) in Section 9 of the will; and that fact prevents Hazel Burdick from being a pretermitted child. By the second codicil, Mrs. Burdick revoked Section 9 of her will. The effect of such revocation is to leave Hazel Burdick without a bequest. But the effect is not to erase or obliterate Hazel Burdick’s name from the will. Section 9 remains in the will, although, by the codicil, it is to be given no effect. The situation here is the same as if Mrs. Burdick had said, T name my adopted daughter, Hazel Bur-dick, but I leave her nothing.’ ” (Emphasis added.)
The majority hold that the trial court erred
“ * * * in holding in effect that because appellant was mentioned in the will but his gift was later eliminated by conveyance it must be assumed that the intention of the testatrix was that the heir receive none of her property.”
To assume the contrary does not seem to me to be less justified, and I am unable to agree with the majority that such holding by the trial court is contrary to the holding in the Fell case, as the facts are entirely different.
Each party to this litigation cites the case of In re Fell’s Estate, 70 Idaho 399, 219 P.2d 941, in support of his position. I do not believe it helps either more than the other, as the factual situation is entirely different from the one now before us. In the Fell case, each of the living children was left property by the will, and the children of three deceased children were entirely omitted from mention in the testator’s *256will. The court held the latter were pre-termitted heirs.
In the present case, the appellant was named and given certain property which the testatrix later sold. A person is presumed to know the reasonable and ordinary result of his or her actions, which in this case would be that the heir could not inherit that which was disposed of. This question is answered concisely in 57 Am.Jur., Wills, sec. 538, Conveyance of Property, thus:
“ * * * It has been said that the alienation of devised property by the testator is conclusive evidence of a change of his intention with regard to the disposition to be made of such property as indicated by the will. A better reason, however * * * is that nothing remains upon which the devise can operate.”' (Emphasis added.)
See also Wolcott v. Shaw, 21 Del.Ch. 1, 2 A.2d 913, which holds:
"The application of the rule that where subject matter of specific devise of realty has been finally disposed of by the testator in his lifetime the devise is revoked is in no wise dependent upon what might seem to have been the intention of the testator, the theory of the law being that the intention to revoke the devise was expressed by the absolute disposition by the testator in his lifetime of the subject matter of the devise.”
If, as the majority opinion holds, alienation of the property literally eliminates that provision from the will, it would not make any difference whether the statute in question is of the Missouri (descendant not named nor provided for) or the Massachusetts (omission to provide, unless shown to be intentional) type. If the provision is literally stricken from the will by alienation of the property, a child would be pretermit-ted under either type statute; if the provision remains in the will, he would not.
In the case of Stone v. Fisher, 65 Idaho 52, 139 P.2d 479, 482, relied upon by the majority, the testatrix had made a will leaving one-fourth her estate to appellant, and providing that the one-fourth should include a certain piece of real property. Later she conveyed the real property to appellant by deed. The court held that the property should not be included in computing appellant’s fourth of the estate. The court said:
»* =:= * -phe testatrix must have had some intention to alter or change her will in so far as it affected the real estate conveyed when she made the deed, otherwise, she would not have made an unconditional deed. She made no change by codicil, or otherwise, in her will. By the deed she was wholly divested of all title and interest in said real estate, as well as all control over the same, when she executed the deed, which operated as a revocation of the will in so far as said real estate was concerned.” (Emphasis added.)
*257There was no pretermitted heir question involved in the Stone case, and the holding in this case may be summarized as the codifier has in a footnote to I.C. sec. 14 — 317, thus:
“Generally, a voluntary alienation of property by deed works a revocation of a will to the extent that the deed and the will are inconsistent, since a will operates only upon property legally and equitably belonging to the testator at the time of his death.”
The probate and district courts were correct in holding that William Halfmoon was not a pretermitted heir, and are supported by the authorities above mentioned.
To hold to the contrary would make it impossible to disinherit a child, or prevent his taking his full share as if testator had died intestate, without making a new will or revising the old one where the property —large or small — no longer belongs to the testator at the time of his death. The testator may have given him an heirloom which became lost, or but a small share of the estate which was sold before the testator’s death. The intention of the testator should certainly rule, and his actions speak for themselves; and we cannot indulge in speculation as to the testator’s intent, wish, or desire, and change his will and substitute ours, and give a child more than the testator — or, as in this case, the testatrix — had done.
The judgment should be affirmed.