Farnum v. Silvano

540 N.E.2d 202 (1989)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

P's mental competence had begun to fail seriously in 1983, three years before she delivered a deed to D. P would lament not hearing from sisters who were dead. She would wonder where the people upstairs in her house had gone, but there was no upstairs to her house. She offered to sell the house to a neighbor for $35,000. (He declined, recognizing the property was worth much more.) She became abnormally forgetful. Frequently she locked herself out of her house and broke into it, rather than calling on a neighbor with whom she had left a key (on one occasion, she broke and entered through a basement window). She hid her cat to protect it from 'the cops . . . looking for my cat.' She would express a desire to return to Cape Cod although she was on Cape Cod. She easily became lost. Payment of her bills required the assistance of her sister and her nephew, who also balanced her checkbook. A brain scan examination disclosed organic brain disease. By January 1987, some six months after the conveyance, P was admitted to Cape Cod Hospital for treatment of dementia and seizure disorder. She was discharged to a nursing home. P was represented by a lawyer selected and paid by D. At the closing, P was, as the trial judge expressed it, 'aware of what was going on.' She was cheerful, engaged in pleasantries, and made instant coffee for those present. After the transaction, P insisted to others -- her sister and nephew, -- that she still owned the property. The judge concluded, P was coherent or in a lucid interval when she signed the deed. The judge ruled for D and P appealed.