Estate of Clark

This is an appeal from the judgment of the Superior Court rendered upon a verdict of the jury denying probate of the will of Alfred C. Clark. The appeal is presented on typewritten transcripts.

Alfred C. Clark died on March 11, 1926, at the age of seventy years. He left surviving him as his only heir at law his sister Elizabeth Clark Wiley, who was the contestant in the trial court. Subsequent to the trial this contestant died and her administrator has been substituted as party respondent herein.

The decedent’s family moved to Sonoma County in the year 1875 and settled upon a ranch near Glen Ellen. From 1875 to 1898, when the decedent’s father died, the decedent worked with his father on the ranch and in 1898 decedent married and continued to reside with his wife upon the ranch and to farm the same. In 1913 the decedent obtained a divorce from his wife upon the ground of her desertion. He married again in 1916 and his second wife died in 1924. The contestant lived in the same household with decedent until their father’s death, when the contestant moved to another house near by, where she continued to live until her marriage in 1909, when she moved to Ventura County. For many…