Opinion
10-7-1957
DEPARTMENT OF MENTAL HYGIENE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Laurence McGILVERY, Executor of the Estate of Annie Christabel Girard, Deceased, Defendant and Appellant.* Civ. 22190.
Carter, Young, Zetterberg & Henrie, Richard T. Young, Pomona, for appellant. Edmund G. Brown, Atty. Gen., Ariel C. Hilton, Deputy Atty. Gen., for respondent.
DEPARTMENT OF MENTAL HYGIENE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent,
v.
Laurence McGILVERY, Executor of the Estate of Annie Christabel Girard, Deceased, Defendant and Appellant.*
Oct. 7, 1957.
Hearing Granted Dec. 4, 1957.
Carter, Young, Zetterberg & Henrie, Richard T. Young, Pomona, for appellant.
Edmund G. Brown, Atty. Gen., Ariel C. Hilton, Deputy Atty. Gen., for respondent.
DRAPEAU, Justice pro tem.
Joan G. McGilvery was adjudged mentally ill and sent to Patton State Hospital in 1935. She was transferred to Camarillo State Hospital, where she still remains a patient.
Laurence McGilvery is Joan's son. He was four years old when his mother had to go to the hospital. He is now past the age of majority.
Neil McGilvery is Joan's husband and Laurence's father. He disappeared in 1936, and hasn't been seen or heard of since. So he departs from this narrative of facts, a poor specimen of humanity who forsook his sick wife and infant son and shirked the most sacred obligations known to man,
Annie Christanbel Girard was Joan's mother; Laurence's grandmother. She was as different from her son-in-law as day is from night. She took Laurence into her home, and provided for his support and education all the days of his youth; and when she died she left him her estate, except a small trust fund for her daughter. She had a little property that she rented, the old Girard place in Oakland, and she earned a living for herself and her grandson as a nurse.
Annie Girard died in 1955, eighty-three years of age. Her will was admitted to probate, and Laurence was named as executor. The appraised value of her estate was $14,584.69, and in probate it appreciated to $18,984.69.
The Department of Mental Hygiene presented a claim to the executor for Joan's support and maintenance for the four-year period preceding Annie's death, for $4,737.00. The claim was rejected by the executor.
This action is brought by the state to enforce payment of the claim, and the executor appeals from a judgment against him by the superior court.
Until the claim was presented no money was paid to the state for Joan's care and maintenance, either by her husband, who couldn't be found, or by her son, who was a minor and couldn't pay anything, or by her mother, who had about all she could do to support herself and raise the boy.
The executor contends on appeal:
(1) While liability under the statute may potentially exist, it could not become fixed and determined as to the decedent except by judicial hearing conducted during her lifetime and resulting in a determination of her ability to pay the amount, in whole or in part.
(2) The complaint fails to state a cause of action.
(3) The Department of Mental Hygiene may not recover the cost of support retroactively after a person dies.
(4) Decedent did not have the ability to pay support charges for her daughter during the four-year period in question.
(5) The Department waived its claim against decedent.
(6) The Department is estopped to assert a claim against decedent's estate.
(7) The Department cancelled or remitted any claim it might have had against decedent.
The rights of the parties are measured by a general legislative scheme for the care and maintenance of mentally ill persons to be found in sections 6650 to 6664 of the Welfare and Institutions Code.
Every one of appellant's contentions is answered by the provisions of sections 6650 and 6651 of the Welfare and Institutions Code as those sections read in 1951, the year the support obligation sued upon commenced. Cf. In re Estate of Phipps, 112 Cal.App.2d 732, 247 P.2d 409, 33 A.L.R.2d 1251.
Pertinent parts of these sections are as follows: 's 6650. Liability for care and transportation.
'The husband, wife, father, mother, or children of a mentally ill person * * * shall cause him to be properly and suitably cared for and maintained, * * *. The husband, wife, father, mother, or children of a mentally ill person * * *, and the administrators of their estates, * * * shall be liable for his care, support, and maintenance in a state institution of which he is an inmate. The liability of such persons and estates shall be a joint and several liability, and such liability shall exist whether the mentally ill person * * * has become an inmate of a state institution pursuant to the provisions of this code or pursuant (to certain named sections of the Penal Code).'
's 6651. Determination of monthly rate: Advance Payment: Reduction, etc., of amount where estate or relatives unable to pay: Refunds in case of death, parole or discharge. The monthly rate for the care, support, and maintenance of all insane persons * * * at the hospitals for the insane * * * where there is liability to pay for such care, support, and maintenance, shall be determined by the Director of Institutions, and shall be payable in advance. The superintendent of a State institution for the insane * * * shall, however, on the order of the Director of Institutions, reduce, cancel or remit the amount to be paid by the estate or the relatives, as the case may be, liable for the care, support, and maintenance of any insane person * * * committed thereto and confined therein, on satisfactory proof that the estate or relatives, as the case may be, are unable to pay the cost of such care, support, and maintenance. * * *'
In applying the law to the facts in this case this court has followed the method suggested by our Supreme Court in County of Los Angeles v. Frisbie, 19 Cal.2d 634, 639, 122 P.2d 526, 529: '(R)eason must have its just proportion, and * * * the court is free to study the history and purpose of the enactment and the previous state of the legislation on the subject, as well as other statutes n pari materia and the benefits sought to be provided.' See, also, In re Estate of Phipps, supra, 112 Cal.App.2d 732, 247 P.2d 409.
Referring briefly to appellant's contentions, which, as stated, are all answered by the code sections:
(1) The law does not require a judicial hearing and order, to fix the liability of a relative of a mentally ill person in a state hospital. In some cases the law does require judicial inquiry into the financial condition of responsible relatives, followed by a court order for their support. (See applicable sections in the Welfare and Institutions Code as to inebriates and dipsomaniacs.) In this case the liability is fixed by law and no court hearing or order is provided for.
(2) Reading the complaint with the quoted sections of the code demonstrates that it does state a cause of action.
(3) Again applying the facts in this case to the code sections, it clearly appears:
That the state may recover costs of support mentally ill persons after those responsible therefor have died, or (4) whether or not such persons had the ability to pay. The law doesn't use the words 'if of sufficient ability' to pay. St.1903, p. 505. Those words were taken out of the law in 1909, and haven't been in it since. See, In re Estate of Perl, 110 Cal.App.2d 8, 242 P.2d 101, for the history of this section of the Welfare and Institutions Code.
That (5) the state did not waive its claim. Nor (6) is it estopped to collect it. Nor (7) was it cancelled or remitted.
This court is not unmindful of the financial burden and possible handicap this young man must bear. All men have burdens to bear. Sometimes it seems as though they were devised by inexorable destinies that sway the lives of men, like pawns upon the checkered board of time. But, after all, this claim is for part payment only of his own mother's treatment and care during her long stay in the hospital. It would establish a legal precedent that would put an unfair financial burden upon the people of our state if this court were to hold as he contends.
And surely none of us would go back to the days of Tom-o-Bedlams, when there was no one who could or would minister to a mind diseased; when unhappy people like Joan were confined under conditions of unspeakable cruelty; and when they were turned into the streets, uncured, to beg for food and to die of starvation and neglect.
In our modern and enlightened treatment of the mentally ill, the people of our state must bear the cost; but it is only right that relatives of patients in our state mental hospitals should, to the best of their ability, assume as much of it as they fairly can.
In this case the Department of Mental Hygiene treated Annie fairly and kindly during her lifetime; her estate is well able to pay the claim, and there is no good reason why it should not. Annie was liable for Joan's support and treatment in the hospital; Joan's husband was also liable (In re Guardianship of Thrasher, 105 Cal.App.2d 768, 776, 234 P.2d 230); and now Joan's son is liable, to the extent of his financial ability to pay.
No case in point, binding upon us, has been brought to light by the industry of court and counsel. The Superior Court of Kern County takes a view similar to ours in an appeal from a municipal court judgment. Department of Mental Hygiene v. Shane, 142 Cal.App.2d Supp. 881, 299 P.2d 747.
The judgment is affirmed.
WHITE, P. J., and FOURT, J., concur. --------------- * Opinion vacated 323 P.2d 65.