Court Opinion

ID: 9644413
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:55:19.465812+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:12.987677
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing.
PER CURIAM.
In their petition for rehearing the appellants say that the probate court necessarily held that the devise was invalidated. We do not think so; the quitclaim deed passed the title; this is the crux of our disagreement with counsel. Any question as to the validity of the devise was taken out of the case by the parties in the state court by the delivery and acceptance of the quitclaim deed.
 To call the deed a waiver does not help appellants. A waiver may be defined as the intentional relinquishment of a known right with both knowledge of its existence and an intention to relinquish it.1 When a constitutional provision is designed for the protection solely of the property rights of the citizen, it is competent for him to waive the protection and to consent to such action as would be invalid if taken against his will.2 By such waiver the citizen relinquishes or refuses to accept only rights belonging to him. He cannot affect the rights of third parties that have accrued. For instance, if the grantors had incumbered the property before the delivery of the deed, the rights of third parties would not have been impaired thereby. In this case the tax claim accrued upon the death of the testator, and no subsequent act of the heirs could invalidate that claim.
The United States was not a party to the probate proceedings, and there is no question of res judicata as to it. The rules-of-decision Act3 of course applies, but the state court did not decide that the devise was merely voidable. We are following the state law in holding, in accordance with the Mississippi Constitution, that the devise was null and void and that the heirs took the property so devised as though no testamentary disposition had been made.4
The petition for rehearing should be denied.
Denied.

 Bennecke v. Conn. Mut. Life Ins. Co., 105 U.S. 355, 359, 26 L.Ed. 990.

 Cooley’s Constitutional Limitations, 219.

 Revised Statutes, Sec. 721, 28 U.S.C. A. § 725.

 Sec. 269, Mississippi Constitution of 1890.