The case in which the law first sanctioned the view of partial insanity, which is also one of the landmark cases therefore, was the case of Dew v. Clark,[88] which excited great interest, and received a very thorough examination by one of the ablest judges of modern times, Sir John Nicholl. It was proved that the testator regarded his daughter as invested with singular depravity, a peculiar victim of vice and evil, the special property of Satan from her birth, and in consequence disinherited her. The syllabus of the case presents in so clear and concise manner the pith of the decision, that it will be useful to quote it:
“Partial insanity is good in defeasance of a will founded immediately (so to be presumed) in or upon such partial insanity. If A, then, makes a will, plainly inofficious in respect to B, and is proved, at the time of making it, to have been under morbid delusion as to the character and conduct of B, the Court will relieve by pronouncing this will to be invalid, and holding A to have died intestate.”
It is from this case, as a starting point, has arisen the theory of monomania, as applied to testamentary capacity. Henceforth a valuable and practicable rule was established, subsequently recognized and enforced in the best considered cases both in England and America—a rule not so much depending on precedent as it does on sound reason and argument. There must be two elements, co-existing, to afford sufficient ground for pronouncing a will invalid at the instigation of relatives and others, who deem themselves cut off from the bounty of a testator by his monomaniacal delusions.
First. There must be a plainly inofficious will; or a will wanting in natural affection and duty.
Second. There must be morbid delusion actually existing at the time of making, in respect to the persons cut off, or prompting the provisions of the inofficious instrument.
This theory is now consistently followed in the courts of this country, and an examination of a few remarkable and historical cases will illustrate the application.
It is thus adopted as a principle of decision in Seaman’s Friend Society v. Hopper,[89] by Judge Denio: “If a person persistently believes supposed facts, which have no real existence except in his perverted imagination, and against all evidence and probability, and conducts himself, however logically, upon the assumption of their existence, he is, so far as they are concerned, under a morbid delusion, and delusion in that sense is insanity. If the deceased, in the present case, was unconsciously laboring under a delusion, as thus defined, in respect to his wife and family connections, who would have naturally been the objects of his testamentary bounty when he executed his will, or when he dictated it, and the court can see that its dispository provisions were or might have been caused or affected by the delusions, the instrument is not his will, and cannot be supported as such in a court of justice.” The same was the ruling in Leach v. Leach.[90]
Still, there needs to be a careful limitation of this theory. If we were to undertake to class all those who exhibit aberrations of conduct in various directions of life, who labor under hallucinations, and a wild imagination in regard to certain matters, whose credulity or whims provoke our mirth as much as our astonishment, as possessing a diseased mind, we should class among such some of the most singularly gifted and acute minds of the world. We all know of numerous cases in which
“Some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his effects, his spirits and his powers
In their confluxions all to run one way.”
Hence we must distinguish between mere eccentricity and monomania. In monomania, a man is not conscious of entertaining opinions different from the mass of men, and refuses to be convinced of laboring, in any degree, under mental unsoundness; the eccentric man is aware of his peculiarity, and persists in his course from choice, and in defiance of the popular sentiment. A remarkable case of eccentricity, as the court determined, bordering very close on monomania, was in the case of Morgan v. Boys,[91] where the will was upheld, on the ground that there was no satisfactory proof of actual unsoundness of mind. The testator devised his property to a stranger, thus wholly disinheriting the heir, or next of kin, and directed that his executors should “cause some parts of his bowels to be converted into fiddle strings—that others should be sublimed into smelling salts, and the remainder of his body should be vitrified into lenses for optical purposes.” In a letter attached to the will, the testator said: “The world may think this to be done in a spirit of singularity, or whim, but I have a mortal aversion to funeral pomp, and I wish my body to be converted into purposes useful to mankind.” The testator was shown to have conducted his affairs with such prudence and ability, that, so far from being imbecile, he had always been regarded by his associates, through life, as a person of indisputable capacity.[92]