Marceaux v. Marceaux
Marceaux v. Marceaux
Opinion of the Court
This suit is by the children of defendant to interdict him on the alleged ground of senile dementia. He is 80 years old. His property is valued at about $75,000, consisting of some 2,000 acres of land and about 200 head of cattle. His occupation in life has been the raising of cattle and cultivating some 20 acres of land. He can no longer attend to the cattle in person, but has some one to do it for him. One of his sons is his agent for selling the cattle. There is no suggestion that the cattle are not well attended to or that the son agent is not faithful to his trust. The old man no longer cultivates any land, for the reason that he is unable to do it in person and has no one to do it for him. Three years before the filing of this suit he married a woman of 26. He had been a widower for 18 years. Asked why he remarried, he said:
“Because I was in trouble. I had no home; no woman to look after my household, and I thought I could support somebody at home who would take care of me. * * * I was alone with two little children, and I thought I had found a person who would take care of me. I had an affection for her and she for me.”
He made no secret of his intended marriage, and was not beguiled into it; and three years after the event he seems not to regret having-made the venture, quite the contrary. His testimony, covering 23 typewritten pages, not only does not show a weakened mentality, but, on the contrary, shows a pretty alert and vigorous one. Instances of breach of contract or promise which two of his children had in their testimony attributed to lapse of memory he explained in detail for justifying himself; and his explanation certainly shows that if his memory is weak his understanding and his faculty of telling his side of a story are not. He is shown to be very much more irritable than he used to be, and more
Judgment affirmed.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- MARCEAUX v. MARCEAUX
- Status
- Published
- Syllabus
- (Syllabus by Editorial Staff.) Insane Persons In a suit by children of defendant, a man of 80, to interdict him on ground of senile dementia, evidence that he could no longer personally attend to his business, that three years before he had married a woman of 26 to look after his household and had made a will giving her one-fourth of his property, and that he was mentally alert and vigorous, though slightly irritable and inclined to neglect in paying his taxes and repairing his place, showed no ground for interdiction.