Harrington v. Union Trust Co.

THE COURT.

This is an application hy the alleged widow praying the court in probate to award her a family allowance from the estate of John B. Harrington, deceased. The court refused the application. The evidence upon the hearing is in all respects the same as that introduced upon the same alleged widow’s application for a homestead, disposed of in the appeal in

Estate of Harrington, ante,

p. 244, filed September 18, 1903.

Upon the authority of that case the order appealed from is affirmed.

Hearing in Bank denied.

Beatty, C. J., dissented from the order denying a hearing in Bank in this case, and in case No. 3201,

ante,

p. 244, and filed the following opinion on the 17th of October, 1903:—

[295]

BEATTY, C. J.

I dissent from the order denying a rehearing of these causes and from the conclusions of the court upon which the judgments are affirmed.

The case here differs from that presented in

Estate of Newman,

124 Cal. 688, in one main particular. There the wife was guilty of bigamy and adultery, but was accorded all the rights of a widow in the estate of the husband she had deserted and betrayed, and that after she had claimed and received a widow’s share out of the estate of her bigamous husband. Here a wife who had been deserted for many years, honestly believing that her husband was dead, contracted a second marriage. She was—so the opinion of the court assumes—legally and morally innocent. When she heard that her husband was living, her second husband left her and has disappeared. .She has received nothing from him, and because she is innocent she is denied any of the rights of a widow in the estate of her husband. Our law, in other words, as construed by the court, punishes the innocent and rewards the guilty. The argument by which this result is reached, as I understand it, is this: No woman can have two husbands; Mrs Newman’s second marriage was void because she knew her husband was living, and, being void, had no effect upon her first marriage. Mrs. Harrington having good reason to believe her husband dead, her second marriage is not void, but only voidable, and remains valid until its nullity is adjudged by a competent tribunal; therefore, no such decree having been rendered, she was not the wife of Harrington when he died, and is not now his widow. This sounds like logic, but the soundness of any argument ought to be doubted when it leads to an absurd result; and the flaw in this reasoning, I think, consists in attributing too large a meaning to the word “valid” as used in the statute. It is clearly within legitimate rules of construction.,to give that word a qualified meaning, and to hold that it does not validate the second marriage for all purposes, but only for the purpose of remedying those evils which the legislature had in view.