Halley v. Webster
Supreme Judicial Court of Maine
This was an appeal from the decree of the Judge of Probate, approving the last will and testament of Charles T. Halley, deceased.
Read the full summary
This was an appeal from the decree of the Judge of Probate, approving the last will and testament of Charles T. Halley, deceased. The appellants alleged that the deceased, at the time of making the instrument, was not of sound and disposing mind and memory; and an issue was formed for the jury, and tried before Shelley J. The respondent had introduced and examined one Osmore, who had attended the deceased in his last sickness, and whose testimony had a tendency to show, that the deceased had a sound mind at the time of making the will. The heirs at law introduced evidence to discredit Osmore,…
1Opinion of the Court
The opinion of the Court was drawn up by
Whitman C. J.
— The instructions of the Judge to the jury, as to the proof of sanity, were unquestionably correct. No position can be better established than that, if a testator, a short time before making his will, be proved to have been of unsound mind, it throws the burthen of proof upon those who come 1o support the will to show the restoration of his sanity. The Judge must be understood to mean a general and fixed insanity; and not a mere temporary delirium, such as takes place in a fit of intoxication. When a person is laboring under a typhus…
2Cited by2 opinions
- Bever v. SpanglerSupreme Court of Iowa · 1895
- Chandler v. BarrettSupreme Court of Louisiana · 1869