Sweeney's Estate

Citations

• 78 Pa. Super. 417
• 1922 Pa. Super. LEXIS 131

Syllabus

<p>Decedents’ estates — Victims of common disaster — Survivorship— Lack of presumption — Necessity of proof — Effect of failure to prove survivorship.</p> <p>The rule of the common law is that when two or more persons perish in the same disaster, and there is no fact or circumstance to prove which survived, there is no presumption whatever on the subject. None arises from considerations of age or sex, and the law will no more presume that all died at the same instant than it will presume that one survived the other. It treats the ease as one to be established by evidence, and lays the burden of proof on him who claims survivorship.</p> <p>In the absence of evidence from which the contrary may be inferred, all may be considered to have perished at the same moment; not because that fact is presumed, but because, from failure to prove the contrary by those asserting it, property rights must necessarily be settled on that theory. If there are other circumstances shown, tending to prove survivorship, courts will then look at the whole case for the purpose of determining the question, but if only the fact of death by a common disaster appears they will not undertake to solve it on account of the nature of the question, and its inherent uncertainty.</p> <p>When a father and daughter are found dead, the result of inhaling escaping illuminating gas, and there is not sufficient legal evidence on which to base a conclusion that the daughter survived her father, it necessarily follows that title to the father’s property did not prima facie vest in the daughter.</p>