Torrence's Estate

Citations

• 47 Pa. Super. 509
• 1911 Pa. Super. LEXIS 191

Syllabus

<p>Evidence — Parent and child — Legitimacy—Marriage.</p> <p>1. Where a woman claims to be the only heir of a decedent, and bases her claim upon the alleged fact that she was born four months after her mother’s marriage with the decedent, and the fact of the marriage is disputed, the court may admit in evidence a proceeding in divorce in which the mother was libelant and the decedent respondent as an admission on the part of the mother of the fact of her marriage with the decedent.</p> <p>2. In such a case a locket said to have been presented to the claimant by her father with a picture of her mother therein, is properly admitted in evidence as corroborating the declarations of the decedent that the claimant was his daughter; but it is not proper to admit in evidence the declarations of a stranger made twenty years before, that the claimant was the daughter of another man than the decedent; nor is it proper to permit a witness for the claimant to be asked .on cross-examination whether the. decedent had not compelled by legal proceedings a certain man named to deliver to him certain letters written by plaintiff’s mother to himself.</p> <p>Orphans’ court — Auditing judge — Findings of fact — Review.</p> <p>3. Findings of fact by an auditing judge as to the legitimacy of a claimant of an estate, when confirmed by the court in banc, and based upon sufficient evidence, will not be reversed by the appellate court in the absence of manifest error.</p> <p>Marriage — Evidence—Justice of the peace.</p> <p>4. Evidence that a woman joined her hands with that of a man before a justice of the peace, stood mute during the marriage ceremony which the justice performed, and did not in any way dissent when the justice declared them man and wife, does not justify an inference that the woman refused her assent to the marriage.</p>