Fuller's Estate
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
Fuller's Estate, 250 Pa. 78 (Pa. 1915)
95 A. 382
Brown, Elkin, Frazer, Moschzisker
Fuller's Estate
Opinion of the Court
The relation between the mother of the appellants and William C. Fuller was illicit at its commencement, and the presumption is that it so continued: Hunt’s App., 86 Pa. 294; Appeal of Reading Fire Insurance and Trust Company, 113 Pa. 204; Patterson’s Est., 237 Pa. 24. The burden was upon the appellants to show the actual marriage of their mother to the decedent whose estate they are claiming as his heirs. The court below properly found, under all the testimony, that they had failed to prove a marriage, and their appeal must, therefore, be dismissed.
Appeal dismissed at appellants’ costs.
Reference
- Cited By
- 12 cases
- Status
- Published
- Syllabus
- Decedents’ estates — Children of illicit union — Marriage—Burden of proof — Insufficient eviclence. 1. Where the relation between a man and woman was illicit at its commencement, the presumption is that it so continued and the burden is upon those who assert that a marriage subsequently took place to establish the fact of such marriage. 2. Where the children of intestate decedent who were the offspring of a union illicit at its commencement, petitioned for a citation to compel the administratrix of such decedent to file an account, the petition was properly refused in the absence of evidence that petitioner’s mother was ever married to decedent, or that decedent had ever publicly recognized her as wife, or had ever cohabited with her in a common dwelling.