Mcle Self-study Article Elusive Lucidities: Eyford v. Nord and California's Delusion Doctrine

• Publication year: 2023

MCLE SELF-STUDY ARTICLE ELUSIVE LUCIDITIES: EYFORD V. NORD AND CALIFORNIA'S DELUSION DOCTRINE

Written by Evan D. Winet, Esq.^*

Having seen with what lucidity and logical coherence certain madmen (with method in their madness) justify their crazed ideas to themselves and to others, I have lost forever any real confidence in the lucidity of my own lucidity.¹

I. INTRODUCTION

A will or other donative transfer that is shown to be the product of an "(insane) delusion,"² as construed by law, is void. This principle, this delusion doctrine, has developed over the past two centuries alongside, or perhaps in the shadows of, the law governing mental capacity to execute donative instruments. The delusion doctrine provides an alternative rationale for invalidating donative transfers and instruments as not being valid expressions of the donor's intent.

However, as with other aspects of capacity law, the delusion doctrine calls on the fact finder to make judgments on matters of mental health, often based on an ambiguous or woefully incomplete evidentiary record and radically disparate expert opinions. To the chagrin of pragmatists, the legal concept of "delusion" itself is inherently elusive and there is no commonly accepted, bright-line test to separate deluded from lucid thinking. To complicate matters further, the field of psychiatry has continuously debated and revised its descriptions of "delusion" over the past century.

This article explores the underlying principles and ambiguities of the delusion doctrine and its development in California, with particular attention to the recent First District decision in Eyford v. Nord (2021) 62 Cal.App.5th 112. This decision is notable both because California delusion doctrine cases are few and far between³ and because the Eyford decision crystallizes long-brewing difficulties within the doctrine itself.

II. DELUSION AS A PARTIAL INCAPACITY

A. Rationale for the Delusion Doctrine

The delusion doctrine is commonly justified as filling a gap in the law of testamentary and donative capacity.⁴Generally, a donative instrument may be set aside on grounds that the donor lacked the requisite mental capacity.⁵ In California, as in most jurisdictions, a testator lacks testamentary capacity if, at the time of executing a will or will-like instrument, they have insufficient mental capacity to understand the testamentary act itself, to have an adequate understanding of the nature and condition of their own property, and/or to remember and understand who (or what) is most likely to receive that property.⁶ A would-be trustor lacks sufficient mental capacity to execute a trust either by this same testamentary standard or by a higher standard depending on the complexity of the instrument.⁷

The delusion doctrine addresses situations in which a donor might satisfy such general mental capacity standards and yet be afflicted by a delusional belief that compromises their donative expressions in a more discrete manner. Under California's framework, insanity that invalidates a bequest takes "one of two forms, either insanity of such broad character as to establish mental incompetency generally, or some specific and narrower form of insanity, under which the testator is the victim of some hallucination or delusion."⁸ It is a threshold question for application of the delusion doctrine whether the donor lacks the requisite

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mental capacity. If the donor possesses the requisite mental capacity, then one may need to inquire whether any part of the estate plan is nevertheless tainted by delusion. If they do not possess the requisite mental capacity, then the donative expression is invalid and there is no further need to wade into the delusion doctrine.

For example, imagine a donor afflicted with the Napoleon delusion—the delusional belief of being Napoleon Bonaparte himself.⁹ If this false Napoleon, this "Not-Poleon," were to (inaccurately) identify the Bonapartes as his kith and kin or list all of Europe and Russia as his property, then a reasonable argument could be made to invalidate any of Not-Poleon's donative transfers—not because he suffers from the Napoleon delusion, but rather on grounds that he generally lacks the requisite mental capacity to make bequests. In such a case, mental capacity analysis would be quite sufficient to invalidate the transfers and there would be no need to opine further on Not-Poleon's delusion. However, if Not-Poleon, notwithstanding his anachronistic delusion, retains an awareness of his actual present-day property and likely heirs, a court might reasonably conclude that he generally has donative capacity notwithstanding his Napoleonic delusion.

The question would then become whether any of Not-Poleon's bequests, even though made with general mental capacity, were nonetheless products of Not-Poleon's imagined imperial status. Or, to come at it from the other direction, would Not-Poleon not have made those gifts but for his deluded belief that he is Napoleon? The court might need to determine, for example, whether a bequest to the French Foreign Legion arises from Not-Poleon's belief that he is Napoleon or from any benign fact that could plausibly justify the gift; for example, a longstanding admiration for the present-day French military. This is the "absence of a single supporting fact" requirement, discussed further below. Likewise, as the recent Eyford decision illuminates, if Not-Poleon's delusion, however manifest, cannot be tied to diagnosis of a specific underlying mental disorder, then a California court might feel compelled to uphold even an estate plan that is a found to be a product of the delusion.

B. Origins of the Delusion Doctrine

The doctrine's origins are typically ascribed to British common law.¹⁰ The British Prerogative Court considered insane delusion as early as Greenwood v. Greenwood (1790), a case in which a father disinherited a son he believed to be possessed by the devil.¹¹ However, the Greenwood court did not reach the issue of whether insane delusion, as such, invalidated the will. The first full expressions of the delusion doctrine appeared a generation later, more or less simultaneously in a British Prerogative Court case, Dew v. Clark (1822-6),¹² and in a Kentucky appellate decision, Johnson v. Moore's Heirs (1822).¹³

Like Greenwood, Dew v. Clark concerned a father who altered his estate plan based on a belief that his child was possessed by the devil. The daughter challenged her father's will, testifying that her father "laboured under great and continued delusion of mind" about her, "declaring whilst she was in her earliest infancy, that she was invested by nature with a singular depravity—was born to become the peculiar victim of vice and evil—was the special property of Satan."¹⁴ Nephews defended the will on the basis that the daughter could not show the father lacked general testamentary capacity.¹⁵ In its 1822 decision, the court found that the will might be invalidated for "partial insanity," but only if the daughter could prove "that the deceased was insane as to her, notwithstanding his general sanity."¹⁶ In its 1826 decision, the court finally concluded that the father's will had been the product of a "morbid delusion" as to his daughter and was thus void.¹⁷

In Johnson, a Kentucky appellate court affirmed a lower court decision refusing to record a will on the basis that it was the product of derangement. The settlor had struggled with "habitual drunkenness," but was generally "of disposing mind and memory" and "for a great portion of the time, he did appear to retain sufficient intellect to dispose of his estate by will."¹⁸ However, during the relevant period of his life, "he was a great portion of the time in a state of complete derangement, talked wildly about his immense stores of wealth, and at this time conceived an antipathy against his brothers, contending that they designed to destroy or injure him, although they attended him constantly in his illness."¹⁹ In an apparently lucid moment in 1820, he executed a will giving the bulk of his estate to these same brothers and their families.²⁰ However, he disinherited them a year later in what turned out to be his last will.²¹ In finding this last will invalid, the Johnson court weighed factors that would become commonplace in later American delusion cases:

For this disaffection towards them, there never appeared to be the slightest cause, but the contrary; and the reasons for it, when assigned by himself, were futile and groundless. He can not, therefore, be accounted a free agent in making his will, so far as his relatives are concerned, although free as to the rest of the world. But, however free he may have been as to other objects, the conclusion is irresistible that this peculiar defect of intellect, did influence his acts in making his will, and for this cause it ought not to be sustained.²²

Here, the Johnson court found a delusion sufficient to invalidate a will because the lack of a "slightest cause" for the testator's beliefs about his brothers deprived him of the status of a "free agent" as to that one key issue even though he otherwise appeared mentally capable.

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C. Developing the Psychiatric Conception of Delusion

Scientific description of "insane delusion" may be traced to the early nineteenth century. The term "monomania" was coined and first diagnosed around 1810 by the French psychiatrist Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol to denote "an idée fixe, a single pathological preoccupation in an otherwise sound mind."²³ Two decades later, American physician John Eberle described "monomania" as "a state of partial insanity" involving a narrowly circumscribed delusion that leaves other aspects of cognitive capacity intact.²⁴Eberle provides the example of a barber "who continued to occupy himself regularly and cheerfully with his customers, and to converse rationally upon all subjects except his own fortune, and the universal conspiration among his neighbours to poison him."²⁵

The...