Court Opinion

ID: 9639704
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:45:37.278455+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:21.150402
License: Public Domain

MILLER, Associate Justice
(concurring in part, dissenting in part). I concur in the result and in the conclusion that no probable cause was shown for the contest. I join also in believing that the public interest will be better served if, in cases which involve no more of merit than is revealed by the present record, those who share the bounty of the testator should be strongly deterred from “besmirching his reputation or parading the family skeletons after his death.” However, I doubt the wisdom of closing the door completely to contests calculated to reveal the use of fraud, coercion and undue influence in procuring the execution of wills. It seems to me that public policy may be well served by keeping the door a little open for some extreme situations, as where one person or a group of heirs conspire to shut out another; or, perhaps, to prevent the probate of an earlier will containing a bequest for charitable purposes. The object of an in terrorem clause may be to protect the family reputation, but it may he to silence a legatee who, otherwise, would be a material witness.
Where a legatee or devisee is fully competent, armed with adequate legal counsel, and financially able to hazard a contest, public policy may be satisfied by the assumption that fraud or undue influence will be challenged. Under such circumstances a successful contest may break the will and cause a distribution different from the one therein directed. But, while the rule as declared by the majority opinion would, perhaps, be consistent with public policy in such a case, it will not much affect the type of case which it is supposed to affect, or restrain the person whom it purports to restrain, namely, the litigious troublemaker. He will be most apt to take his chances on a successful contest. The person who will be discouraged and restrained is just the person whose right, to litigate, the public policy should be most concerned to protect: poor, timid people; children, widows, in*474competents. It is against the interests of such persons that the schemer, the confidence-man and the ruthless rascal are most apt to operate. If fraud, coercion and undue influence — rarely as they now may be used in procuring the execution of wills ■ — can be covered up and made secure by the insertion of a forfeiture condition into a will, then, far from establishing a beneficent rule of public policy, we may, instead, be putting another weapon into the hands of the racketeer.1
Text and other legal writers, generally, favor treating the forfeiture clause as invalid where probable cause for contest exists.2 The history of the contrary rule and the artificial distinctions which were written into it, do not much commend it for present day uses. On the other hand, the rule of probable cause seems a safe one to apply. Probable cause is a term of well-established meaning.3 An honest, upright person would not act upon a lesser showing of improper conduct. A lawyer would hesitate to advise a legatee to act on less, in the face of such a rule.'4 In the present case, as we have seen, it would not have availed the appellant.
If the numerical balance of decisions in other jurisdictions is in favor of the strict rule,5 that fact is not persuasive to me. There is reason to believe that the determination of wh.ich rule should be adopted in a particular jurisdiction has been influenced by the facts of the first case which came before its courts.6 While the facts of the present case are persuasive for adoption of the more arbitrary rule, this, in it*475self, should warn us against going farther than is necessary in declaring the law for the District.
The Smithsonian case7 is susceptible of a different interpretation than that placed upon it by the majority opinion; in fact it has been differently interpreted.8 So broadly interpreted, as it is in the majority opinion, it would logically require a decision against a contesting legatee, even in a case where there is probable cause to believe that the purported signature of the testator is a forgery, or that there has been a subsequent revocation. The arguments in cases cited in the majority opinion- — as supporting a supposed exception upon this ground— just as logically support the right of a legatee to contest a will upon the ground of fraud or coercion or undue influence, in procuring a signature by the testator.9 What real difference does it make whether a man cleverly imitates the signature of a testator or stands over him with a club and compels him to sign? Although the questions of forgery and revocation are not involved in the present case, they, also, suggest the danger of declaring a rule which may later become embarrassingly difficult to apply.
Under all the circumstances, I.prefer to rest the decision upon the ground that there was no probable cause for contest in the present case, and to leave the larger question open for further consideration by lawyers and judges, pending a case which requires decision thereon.

 In re Friend’s Estate, 209 Pa. 442, 58 A. 853, 854, 68 L.R.A. 447: “If, as a matter of fact, undue influence is successfully exerted over one about to execute a will, that same influence will have written into it a clause which will make sure its disposition of the alleged testator’s property. * * * If the condition of forfeiture is to be enforced in every ease, those who improperly influence a testator may boast to a child against whom he discriminated of the power they exerted over him, and of what they were able to accomplish for themselves, taunting and goading on such child to a contest; and yet if, in the end, those who so invited it, and whose conduct made it justifiable, succeed in sustaining the will by retracting or denying what they said, the contestant will not only be deprived of his gift or devise, but those who drew him into the contest may acquire his portion as part of their own plunder. Would any rational testator ever contemplate such a result from a forfeiting clause in his wiU?”

 3 Page, Wills (1941) § 1306; Goddard, Forfeiture Conditions in Wills as Penalty for Contesting Probate, 81 U. of Pa. L.Rev. 267, 274; 1 Schouler, Wills (5th ed.) § 605; 2 Alexander, Wills (1918) 1519; Atkinson, Wills (1937) 357, 358; Keegan, 12 A.B.A.J. 236, 239; Warren, The Progress of the Law, 33 Harv.L.Rev. 556, 569. Note, Validity in a Will of a Condition against Contest. 7 Va.L.Rev. 64, 65: “At one time, the courts were under the impression that such conditions were not adverse to public policy, and that no other view should be admitted; but now, though it is stül generaUy held that the policy of the law does not forbid such conditions, yet they are very strictly construed in favor of the contesting legatee; however, in some jurisdictions, they are considered as against public policy. When the working effect of such a condition is considered and analyzed, the last holding appears to be most sound.”
Notes. Validity of Condition for Forfeiture of Legacy on Contest of Will, 39 Harv.L.Rev. 628, 631, Conditions against Contest in a Will, 23 Col.L.Rev. 169, 172.

 See, for example, Nelson v. International Harvester Co. of America, 117 Minn. 298, 304, 135 N.W. 808, 810; Alsop v. Lidden, 130 Ala. 548, 554, 30 So. 401, 403; cf. Mt. Vernon & M. H. S. Co. v. McKenney, 46 App.D.C. 99, 116; Herson v. United States, 65 App.D.C. 86, 87, 80 F.2d 529, 530, quoting Dumbra v. United States, 268 U.S. 435, 441, 45 S.Ct. 546, 69 L.Ed. 1032.

 See Dutterer v. Logan, 103 W.Va. 216, 137 S.E. 1, 52 A.L.R. 83.

 Dutterer v. Logan, 103 W.Va. 216, 221, 137 S.E. 1, 3, 52 A.L.R. 83: “We think there can be no doubt that the great weight of authority is against the strict enforcement of forfeitures contained in devises and bequests. On the contrary, that when there is prolalilis causa liti gandi, such forfeitures will not be enforced, certainly not where there has [sic) been no devises or bequests over of the forfeited estate. This is in accord with the highest judicial authority of this country, Smithsonian Inst. v. Meech, supra; and is the rule in Virginia, Fifield v. Van Wyck, supra; and is the rule of sound reason, in our opinion, which we are disposed to adopt and apply in this case.”

 Goddard, Forfeiture Conditions in Wills as Penalty for Contesting Prolate, 81 U. of Pa.L.Rev. 267, 273.

 Smithsonian Institution v. Meech, 169 U.S. 398, 18 S.Ct. 396, 42 L.Ed. 793.

 Whitehurst v. Gotwalt, 189 N.C. 577, 580, 127 S.E. 582, 584; Dutterer v. Logan, 103 W.Va. 216, 137 S.E. 1, 52 A.L.R. 83. And cf. Note, Non-contesting Clauses — Their Effect and Validity in Wills, 87 Cent.L.J. 22, 27; Goddard, Forfeiture Conditions in Wills as Penalty for Contesting Probate, 81 U. of Pa.L.Rev. 267, 272; Keegan, Provision in Will Forfeiting Share of Contesting Beneficiary, 12 A.B.A.J. 236, 239.

 Rouse v. Branch, 91 S.C. 111, 118, 74 S. E. 133, 135: “No case has been cited, and we do not believe any can be found, sustaining the proposition that a devisee or legatee shall not have the right, upon probable cause, to show that a will is a forgery, without incurring the penalty of forfeiting the estate given to him by the will. The right of a contestant to institute judicial proceedings upon probable cause to ascertain whether the will was ever executed by the apparent testator is founded upon justice and morality. If a devisee should accept the fruits of the crime of forgery under the belief, and upon probable cause, that it was a forgery, he would thereby become morally a particeps criminis, and yet, if he is unwilling to commit this moral crime, be confronted with the alternative of doing so, or of taking the risk of losing all under the will, in case it should be found not to be a forgery. Public policy forbids that he should be tempted in such a manner.”
The case of In re Bergland’s Estate, 180 Cal. 629, 636, 182 P. 277, 280, 5 A.L.R. 1363, stands merely for the following proposition; “It follows that an attempt in good faith to probate a later purported will, spurious in fact, but believed to be genuine by the party seeking its probate, does not fall within the forfeiture clause under consideration here.”