Court Opinion

ID: 9696034
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:34:14.004482+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:18.016842
License: Public Domain

O’Sullivan, J.
(concurring). Since the General Assembly has now determined our public policy respecting inheritance by unlawful homicide, I can concur in the result reached by my colleagues. Such inheritance is prohibited, under the limitations set by legislative enactment, only when the homicide amounts to murder and only when the would-be inheritor has been convicted of that crime. General Statutes § 7062. I disagree, however, with that part of the opinion which holds that, prior to the passage of the statute in 1947 (Sup. 1947, § 1316i), the common law of Connecticut permitted a murderer to take from his victim by will or descent. A majority of my brethren take the position that, in spite of its repulsiveness, inheritance by murder was legally justified before 1947 because, they say, its prevention would have required the court to nullify the statute of wills and the statute of descent and distribution. This reasoning, it seems to me, is faulty. Equity offers a method which will result in nullifying neither statute. Under that method, both statutes are permitted to operate. By resort to equity, however, the property passing to the murderer would be impressed with a constructive trust for the benefit of those who, in case of testacy, would have been entitled to the property on the death of the testator if the devise or bequest to the mur*506derer had been revoked, or for the benefit of those Who, in ease of intestacy, would have been the heirs or next of kin of the intestate if the murderer had predeceased him. Restatement, Restitution § 187; Colton v. Wade, (Del. Ch.) 80 A.2d 923, 925; Vesey v. Vesey, (Minn.) 54 N.W.2d 385, 388; Whitney v. Lott, 134 N.J. Eq. 586, 590, 36 A.2d 888; Riggs v. Palmer, 115 N.Y. 506, 511, 22 N.E. 188; Bryant v. Bryant, 193 N.C. 372, 377, 137 S.E. 188; Ames, Lectures on Legal History, p. 310; 3 Bogert, Trusts, § 478, p. 50; 4 Pomeroy, Equity Jurisprudence (5th Ed.) § 1054d; 3 Scott, Trusts, § 492; note, 51 A.L.R. 1096, 1098. I refuse to concede that equity would permit a person to profit from such an atrocious act as murder.
In this opinion Baldwin, J., concurred.