Court Opinion

ID: 9582446
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:27:00.653973+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:48.856233
License: Public Domain

GOODELL, J., and DOOLING, J.
We concur in the affirmance of the order but not in the sweeping conclusion, which is unnecessary to the decision in this case, that a mutual will by which a wife agrees to subject her separate property to its, dispositive provisions goes into the probate court burdened with a presumption that the husband has overreached the wife. Nor is it necessary to find that there was any fraud practiced by the decedent.
There is ample evidence, as pointed out in the main opinion, from which the probate court could properly conclude that the decedent and his wife were laboring under the mutual mistake that the property excluded by the probate court’s order was not included in the terms of the contract made a part of the mutual will.
The document is both a contract and a will. Insofar as it purports to subject certain property to testamentary disposition which the husband could not otherwise dispose of by will it is a contract. In its dispositive provisions it is a will. The contract portion of the document is subject to the rules of mutual mistake applicable to contracts generally. The evidence produced by the wife is sufficient to support the probate court’s conclusion that certain property of the wife was by mutual mistake of the parties included in the language of the will in the belief of both parties that the language used did not cover it. This is sufficient to entitle the wife to relief on the ground of mutual mistake. (Stafford v. California C. P. Growers, 11 Cal.2d 212 [78 P.2d 1150].) We need go no further to affirm the order.