In Re Estate of Mason

[317]

NOURSE, J.

Elizabeth Boling and Clara Bees, as legatees and devisees under the will of Z. A. Mason, deceased, have taken three separate appeals from three separate orders of the probate court in the above-entitled estate. All three appeals are presented to the court on a single typewritten record consisting of the clerk’s and reporter’s transcripts.

The first appeal is from an order granting to the widow of the deceased a temporary family allowance pending the filing of inventory and appraisement. The second appeal is from a similar order granting to the widow a family allowance pending administration and also setting aside certain exempt property to the widow. The third appeal is from an order setting apart to the widow a probate homestead which was claimed to be community property.

The only ground urged by the appellants on their appeals from the two orders relating to family allowance is that the allowance of $75 per month was unreasonable and excessive. The argument is that inasmuch as the appraised value of the estate was but $11,000 and that the income therefrom was about $64 per month at the time of the order the effect of the order is to give to the widow a part of the

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of the estate under the guise of a family allowance. It is conceded by the appellants that the amount to be allowed in cases of this kind is wholly within the discretion of the probate court and that this discretion cannot be disturbed by the appellate court unless it can be shown to have been abused. In the record before us it appears that the widow is sick and infirm and requires the aid of a nurse or other attendant and that outside of the allowance made by the probate court she has an income of but $52 a month, consisting of $22 in rentals from her own private property and $30 as a pension from the federal government as a widow of the deceased, who was a Civil War veteran. We are not prepared upon this record to say that the trial court abused its discretion in the actions complained of.

As to the third appeal it appears that the deceased had some private property prior to his marriage to the surviving widow and that since their marriage (which occurred in 1903) he had purchased several lots of' land in the city of Napa, had erected some houses thereon, and had received the rents therefrom; that during all of this time he had been