Lusitania Disaster: Iowa, Wales and the Bastard Daughter:
“Domicile” v. “Residence”

Michael Sean Quinn
(Further Information Below)


            This case is a “Lusitania Disaster”-generated probate case, with a twist of obscurity.  Evan Jones emigrated from Wales to Iowa in 1883, when he was 33 years old, and became a naturalized American in 1896, becoming an active citizen.  He married an American citizen, curiously, the widow of another man named “Jones”; Evan had met them both on the boat over and settled in their town.  Evan left Wales in the first place because of a “bastardy” proceeding pending against him brought by the mother of the appellant in this case.  In re Jones Estate[:] Adams v. Smith, 182 N.W.227 (Iowa 1921).
 Evan had been a coal miner in Wales. He continued to be an industrious and thrifty fellow in Iowa and accumulated substantial properties. In 1915, Evan disposed of most (probably) of his property and had $22,000.00 in cash, 20,000.00 left in a bank account. The rest of the cash he took with him and returned to Wales, where he told the banker he intended to live with his sister.
Alas, the poor devil, who was 65, would never get to Wales to live out his years since he was a “Lusitania-casualty.”  (As background, it might be worth keeping in mind that $22.000.00 in 1915 would, in June 2015, amount to $511,471.68 in purchasing power.)
Evan dies intestate. There was apparently no dispute as to the facts of the case. From the looks of the opinion, the question was whether the sister of Evan or his bastard daughter were entitled to the money left at the bank, and whatever else was in the estate. Here is how the Iowa Supreme Court formulated the issue:
The question for our determination, in this case, is whether or not, under the facts stated, the domicile of the decedent at the time of his death was in Wapello County, Iowa or Wales. If his domicile at the time of the Lusitania sank was legally in Wales, then it is conceded by all the parties that, the appellant, as his illegitimate child, would have no interest in his estate. On the other hand, if the decedent at said time legally had his domicile in Wapello County, Iowa, then the property passes to the appellant as his sole heir under the laws of this state.

All the parties had agreed that Jones was permanently leaving his home in Iowa and intended to live out his days back in Wales.
            According to the course, the issue of “Where is the domicile of X?” or “Where was X domiciled when?” has been discussed by courts from time to time, but the facts of those cases do not resemble those in this one.  In addition most of the “domicile cases” involve trying to distinguish between domicile and residence.  In this case the precise question before the court was “Where was [Jones’] domicile for the purpose of descent of personal property on the 7th day of May, 1915, when the Lusitania was sunk off the western coast of the British Isles?”
            According to the court, it was generally recognized that there were three classes of domiciles: of origin (where born), of choice (or by election by the person at issue), and by operation of law. Only the first two mattered to this, observed the court.  In addition, the first of these three is probably not really relevant since it is mainly for “infants.”
            Now there can be a number of different domiciles for different purposes. For example, according to various courts, a person might have two of them for tax purposes or several others purposes.   That is not the case when it comes to domicile for the purpose of descent of personal property.
            The court found the answer simple:
He died in itinerate [roughly, on the march].  It is needless for us to cite the vast number of cases announcing the general rule that the acquisition of a new domicile must have been completely perfected, and hence there must have been a concurrence both of the fact of removal and the intent to remain in the new locality before the former domicile can be considered lost.

The court reviewed a number of English cases and a number of much earlier American cases. There have been two different rules, and the court adopts
[t]he general rule that a domicile once legally acquired is retained until a new domicile is secured, and that, in the acquisition of such a new domicile, both the fact and the intention must concur, it seems to us is a rule of universal and general application and that there is neither good logic nor substantial reason for the application of an exception to that rule in the case where the party is in itinerate toward the domicile of origin.

Several unrelated points perhaps should be suggested.  First, it looks like the illegitimate daughter lived in Wales all along.  One wonders what happened in the bastardy lawsuit against “Father Jones” which stimulated his move to Iowa in the first place.  So we have Evan’s sister who lived in Wales suing his daughter who apparently also lived in Wale, but doing so in Iowa. 
              Second, one might be tempted to think that it looks like Evan raised as step-children, the children of the widow he met on the boat over and then married in Iowa. (Ms. Jones was then traveling with her first husband also named– guess what–“Jones.”) However many step children there were, they got nothing in this case.
It doesn’t take much imagination to wonder what all was actually going one. Don’t wonder too much. A surprising twist is to be found in an associated case that will be outlined below.  
Third, since nothing is said about a will in the court’s opinion, it is reasonable to infer that Evan died intestate. Why would a careful fellow like he appear to have failed to have a will or something of the sort? Again one wonders if we know all the facts.

Fourth, the opinion itself is interesting though much of the discussion was unnecessary,

 e.g., the relationship between residence and domicile, old English law on domiciles of 

origin, and how Supreme Court of the United States Justice Story felt about this 

portion of English law as revealed in an 1812 opinion he wrote while sitting on a 

Federal Circuit Court and spelled out again in his famous 1834 treatise on conflicts of law.  (Then again I must confess that the discussion of the Supreme Court of the United States in The Venus case, 8 Cranch 252 (1804), with which the opinion, in this case, is in accord is amusing.)


            About six weeks after the Iowa Supreme Court decided In re Jones Estate it had to deal with another “Jones Estate Case.” Griffiths v. Smith, 183 N.W. 600 (Iowa 1921).  Evan married his wife Jane Jones in 1906.  (Remember, they met on the boat coming over to the United States, and Jane’s first husband died.) Jane has a daughter Sarahh Griffith; she was grown at the time of the Evan-Jane wedding and had both a separate home and family. 
            Jan became sickly—“a woman in frail health, and died intestate in January 1914.” She left a small estate consisting of almost 30 acres of land.  Before her mother’s “death sickness,” she (Jane) was nearly helpless and needed to be taken care of.  Sarahh was often the helper since she and her mother lived in the same neighborhood.  The amount of time Sarahh had to spend on this went up and up as her mother’s help went down and down.  Furthermore, Evan often sent for her to give him a hand.
            Sarahh made no claim against her mother estate, and she made no claim against that of Evan.  However, she filed a claim for the services she performed at Evan’s request; the sum she sought was $1,820.00—the buying power of which in 2015 is $42,312.66. 
            The administrator of Evan’s estate denied the claim asserting that they were not rendered at the request of Evan. Subsequently, the administrator claimed that they were done for the mother and should come out of her estate and not that of Evan.  According to the court,
after the death of the mother, Evan Jones, having a statutory interest in the land of which she died seized, conveyed the same by deed to the surviving children of his deceased wife (including the plaintiff herein), and in consideration of such conveyance or relinquishment the grantees assumed and agreed to pay all the indebtedness existing against her estate.
No evidence was offered to the trial court suggesting that Sarah did not render the services she describes, that they were defective, or that Evan didn’t ask for the help.  The fact that Sarah was Jane’s daughter does not relieve Evan of owing money.
            As Jane’s husband had a
natural and legal duty to provide a home, car, support and nursing for his sick wife.  His was the primary duty to furnish all the needed care, support and help which her condition required and when he expressly or impliedly requested the plaintiff to meet these wants and supply these needs[,] the law imposed upon him the obligation to pay therefor[e].

            Moreover, the conveyance Evan arranged with Jane’s children did not imply that Sarah’s charges should have been made against her mother’s estate. No facts suggest that the agreement of the grantees of the land in question committed themselves to paying for Sarah’s services. It is nothing but a form of “tortured” legal argument trying to obtain a release for Evan’s Estate.  
The court finds no merit in the administrator’s case, including his claim that even if Evan’s estate owed something, it couldn’t be what Sarah sought since he work wasn’t worth that much.  The court’s reaction was what is today sometimes called a “benchslap.” “It comes with rather poor grace for the appellant to make this claim at this stage of the proceedings, in fact of the fact that not a word of testimony was offered to show that the services were not in fact rendered, or that their value was materially less than the estimate put upon them by plaintiff or by her witnesses.”
One wonders what is going on here. Doesn’t it look like Evan’s bastard Welsh daughter was trying to hand on to all the money she could get?  After all, no one, in this case, meant anything to her; she didn’t know any of them, including Evan, and certainly not Jane.  

In any case, the Iowa Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the trial-level court, so Sarah presumably got paid for her good works.