In re the Estate of Hayward

Wingate, S.

Despite the obvious inference from Kipling’s familiar dictum, the common law, as presently administered, recognizes no presumption of survivorship where a man and a woman die as the result of a common disaster.

“It is true that the Roman law did recognize a presumption of survivorship in such cases, viz., that the one presumably stronger by reason of age survived the one presumably weaker. And the French laws made like distinction between the sexes, presuming, in the absence of any evidence, that the male survived the female.” (Balder v. Middeke, 92 Ill. App. 227, 229.) In some…