Department of Social Welfare v. MacHado

DOOLING, J.

Respondent, Department of Social Welfare, recovered judgment against the estate of Edwin C. Coram, deceased, for $2,641. This amount had been paid to Coram between July 1,1942 and April 30,1947, as an old age pension.

Coram died at the age of 81 years in October, 1947. He had lived alone for many years at Moss Landing and in April, 1947, he was found unconscious on the highway and taken to the Monterey County Hospital. There $944 was found sewed into his clothes. He was declared incompetent and a guardian of his person and estate appointed on June 14,1947.

The trial court found that he had fraudulently represented that he was entitled to the old age pension by misrepresenting his assets and ordered judgment accordingly. Under Welfare and Institutions Code, section 2223.5, “a person who has received aid in good faith, honestly believing himself to be entitled thereto, but who is found to have possessed property in excess of the amount allowed under the provisions of this chapter, shall be considered to have been ineligible for aid only during the period for which the excess property, if it had been applied to his support at the rate of the aid granted him, would have supported him. In such case the recipient shall repay only the aid he received during such period of ineligibility. ’ ’

Since $600 was the limit of property which an aged person might own and be entitled to the old age pension (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 2163) appellant claims that the limit of the judgment should be the difference between $600 and $944, or $344.

(Board of Soc. Welfare

v.

County of Los Angeles,

27 Cal.2d 90 [165 P.2d 635].) This depends upon appellant’s claim that there is no evidence that decedent did not act in good faith in receiving his pension.

There is evidence that decedent did not work and had

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no known source of income except Ms old age relief from a time before 1942; that in 1921 he had a bank deposit of about $5,000 in a San Francisco bank from which he made withdrawals of about $150 to $200 every month until it was exhausted in January, 1940; and that he had deposited $375 in a Watsonville bank in 1940 from wMch he made various withdrawals until it was closed out in February, 1942. It was a reasonable inference from these facts that the source of the $944 found sewed in his clothes was these bank deposits. Appellant suggests that the proper inference is that decedent saved this amount from his old age pension. It is for the trial court to draw the inference and even where two inferences from the facts are equally reasonable, the inference drawn by the court cannot be disturbed on appeal.