IN THE MATTER OF THE WILL OF JENNIE RIDER BABCOCK. BEATRICE BABCOCK TEMPLETON, PETITIONER AND APPELLEE, VS. WILLIAM RIDER BABCOCK, OPPONENT AND APPELLANT.

Appeal from an order of the Court of First Instance of Manila
admitting to probate the holographic will of Jennie Rider Babcock.

The petition in this case was filed in the Court of First
Instance of Manila on September 8, 1926, by Beatrice Babcock Templeton to secure
probate of a paper writing purporting to express the wishes of Jennie Rider
Babcock, deceased, with reference to the post mortem disposition of all her
property, consisting of corporate stock, jewelry, personal effects and money.
This paper bears date of May 26, 1926, is written wholly in the handwriting of
the deceased and bears her proper signature. It was found among the effects of
the deceased shortly after her death, which occurred on September 3, 1926. When
found, it was contained in an envelope indorsed with the name of her daughter,
Mrs. G. D. Templeton, and son, Mr. W. R. Babcock.

The purport of the
paper is to the effect that the writer leaves her stock and money to her three
grandchildren, bearing the surname Templeton, namely, G. Douglas Templeton, jr.,
Constance Babcock Templeton, and Billy Babcock Templeton, but the writer further
states that all interest and dividends are to be given to her only daughter,
Mrs. Templeton, as well as her jewelry and personal effects “for their support
until the youngest is of age”

The aforesaid instrument is admittedly of a testamentary
character, but it is not executed as a will under the provisions of law
generally governing the execution of the wills made in the Philippine Islands.
The instrument therefore is not offered for probate under section 618 and
related provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure but under section 636, which
authorizes probate by our courts of a will made within the Philippine Islands by
a citizen or subject of another state or country, when such will is executed in
accordance with the law of the state or country of which the testator is a
citizen or subject, and which might be proved under the law of such state or
country.

It is alleged in the petition that the testatrix was at the
time of her death a resident of the State of California, though temporarily
residing in Manila at the time of her death; and the parties have agreed that
this paper could be proved in the State of California as the holographic will of
the deceased. The sole question in controversy therefore now is, whether the
testatrix, at the time the will was made, had the status of a citizen of the
State of California, as required by section 636 of our Code of Civil Procedure.
But, under the first paragraph of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution
of the United States, the citizenship of a person born in the United States, as
was the testatrix in this case, is dependent upon the place of residence, or
domicile; and the question before us ultimately resolves itself into a
contention over the point whether the testatrix had ever acquired a legal
domicile in the State of California and whether, supposing such domicile to have
been acquired, she may not have lost it as a result of her removal from that
state. The proponent of the will, Beatrice Babcock Templeton, mother of the
three children who are principal beneficiaries of the will, contends that the
testatrix acquired a legal domicile in the State of California by residence
therein over two periods of time between 1917 and 1923, and that such domicile
was never lost. William Rider Babcock, the brother of the proponent, resists the
probate of the will on the ground that the testatrix had never acquired a legal
domicile in the State of California, or that, if she had, such domicile had been
lost under the conditions presently to be discussed.

It appears that Jennie Rider Babcock had spent her married life
in the State of Massachusetts; but, her husband having died in 1908, she removed
a year later to Manila where she lived with her son, W. R. Babcock, until in
1917, when she joined the family of her daughter, Mrs. B. B. Templeton, in San
Francisco, California. During these years W. R. Babcock and G. D. Templeton, son
and son-inlaw, respectively, of the testatrix, were running a business in
Manila, which had been incorporated under the style of Babcock & Templeton,
Inc., with Babcock as president of the company and Templeton as its
vice-president. As a branch office had been opened in San Francisco requiring
the presence of an officer of the company, Templeton took up his abode in San
Francisco for the purpose of managing the business of said branch. The
testatrix, it may be noted, had acquired stock in the company and had no other
independent source of income than the dividends derived therefrom.

After remaining with the Templetons in San Francisco for
several months, the testatrix returned to Manila in July, 1918. During this stay
in Manila she occupied an apartment in the house of her son, where she remained
until August, 1920. She then returned to San Francisco and lived with the
Templetons until May, 1923. From a legal point of view, the character and
incidents of this second sojourn in San Francisco constitute the most important
fact in the case, since the trial court deduced from her acts and statements the
conclusion that she had acquired a domicile in California. Among the features of
importance which characterize the incident we note the following: First, her
son-in-law, Templeton, owned a home in San Francisco in which he lived, without
any apparent intention of removing from the state; secondly, upon arriving in
San Francisco, the testatrix established herself as a practitioner in Christian
Science, a cult to which she was attached; thirdly, she engaged in political
activities, taking part in a parade advertising a cause in which she was
interested, and she voted in at least one general election that occurred in that
state; fourthly, she formed an attachment for California, and in many
conversations thereafter with intimate friends, she referred to California as
her home state and expressed her intention of returning there and building a
home in which to live. Indeed, it appears in evidence that only a short time
before her death in Manila she was acquiring a few pieces of Spanish furniture
to take back with her to California.

In the year 1923, Babcock & Templeton, Inc., decided to
close its office in San Francisco and to open a branch in New York City. This
made it necessary for G. D. Templeton to remove with his family to New York
State. He accordingly sold his home in San Francisco and went to live in New
York. This step on the part of the Templetons determined the course of the
testatrix, who gathered her personal effects together and accompanied them to
New York, leaving behind in the care of friends three pieces of furniture to
which she was especially attached and which she perhaps thought she might use
later in California. Upon arriving in New York State, the Templetons established
themselves in White Plains, near New York City. Here the testatrix occupied part
of the apartment which the Templetons had taken, but she appears to have
supplied the furniture necessary for her own use. Not long thereafter, the
testatrix announced herself again in the Christian Science Journal as a
practitioner of Christian Science in White Plains.

The sojourn of the testatrix in New York was apparently not
congenial, since, after a few months of experience in that city, she returned to
Manila, arriving at this place in January, 1924. The impression that conditions
in New York made upon her may be gauged by a statement subsequently made by her
to one of her friends in Manila, “Deliver me from living in New York.” What
really brought her back to the Philippine Islands, apart from her dislike to tie
environment in New York, is not certain, but she suggested to friends here,
after arriving, that a desire to economize the cost of living may have had a
part in her course.

A circumstance to which importance is attached by the appellant
is that, in the Passenger Manifest of the vessel upon which she came to Manila,
she caused New York City to be entered opposite her name in the column
indicating “Last Permanent Residence,” it being insisted that this is an
admission on her part tending to show the acquisition by her of a domicile in
New York State. We consider this circumstance of no probative force in
connection with the issues of this lawsuit. The Passenger Manifest gave the
passenger no choice about indicating whether New York was the place of last
residence or the place of last permanent residence, and of course when she told
the ship’s official that she was from New York City, the name of this place
necessarily had to go down in the column mentioned. As little importance is to
be attached to her Baggage Declaration and Entry, made on the same voyage before
disembarking at Manila, in which she stated that she was a resident of Manila.
Papers of this character are not commonly written with legal precision; and the
circumstance that she had lived many years in Manila and was coming back to this
city, sufficiently explains why she claimed to be a resident of Manila in that
declaration without making any conclusive commitment as to the place of her
domicile in law.

Of some importance, as throwing light upon the state of her
mind towards California and the intention with which she removed from that
state, are the numerous conversations, after her return to Manila in 1924, in
which she revealed an intention of returning to live in California. It is
evident from the proof that the removal of the testatrix from California to New
York did not proceed from her volition but resulted from circumstances over
which she had no primary control, her motive being found in her desire to be
with her daughter and grandchildren. It may also be here stated that the
testatrix had kin in New York State whom she had visited more than once during
her abode in California; and she appears to have inherited some property from a
sister who had been living in New York and who died before the return of the
testatrix to the Philippine Islands.

The finding of the trial court to the effect that the deceased
had acquired a domicile in the State of California is in our opinion based upon
facts which sufficiently support said finding. In particular, we are of the
opinion that the trial court committed no error in attaching importance to the
circumstance that the deceased had voted in California elections. Though not of
course conclusive of acquisition of domicile, voting in a place is an important
circumstance and, where the evidence is scanty, may have decisive weight. The
exercise of the franchise is one of the highest prerogatives of citizenship, and
in no other act of his life does the citizen identify his interests with the
state in which he lives more than in the act of voting.

This record supplies no material with which to refute the
conclusion of the trial court that a domicile was thus acquired by the testatrix
in the State of California; and what we consider the more critical question is
whether or not the domicile thus acquired was subsequently lost by removal from
said state. But upon this point also, we are of the opinion that the conclusion
of the trial court, to the effect that acquired domicile had not been lost, is
in conformity with the evidence. It is a recognized rule that the intention with
which removal is made from a particular state determines whether or not the
domicile is abandoned; and intention is revealed only in the acts and
declarations of the person concerned.

In the case before us there are no declarations of the
testatrix in evidence which would tend to show that, upon removal to New York,
she had any intention of acquiring a legal domicile in that state. On the
contrary her short stay there and her repeated statements made thereafter show
that she could not possibly have had any intention of making that state a place
of permanent abode. As was pointed out by this court in In Re Estate of Johnson
(39 Phil., 156), a person transferring his domicile from one state of the
American Union to another loses his domicile in the state of his earlier abode
upon acquiring a domicile, or citizenship, in the state of his new abode. The
acquisition of the new legal domicile extinguishes the old. Certainly in this
case it cannot be said with any propriety that the domicile of the testatrix in
California was suppressed by the acquisition of a new domicile in New York
State.

But it is said that, even supposing that the testatrix had not
acquired a domicile in New York, yet she was a resident of the Philippine
Islands at the time of her death, and that, having established herself in these
Islands as a place of permanent abode, her will should not be admitted to
probate as the will of a citizen of another state. But the proof shows that
however long the testatrix had resided in the Philippine Islands, she at no time
had any intention of residing here permanently. On the contrary, her repeated
declarations reveal a fixed intention of returning ultimately to the United
States.

Again, it is a rule that a citizen of the United States cannot
acquire citizenship in the Philippine Islands by residence here, however long
continued (In Re Estate of Johnson, 39 Phil., 156). The testatrix therefore
remained at the time of her death a citizen of the United States. Her will is
therefore provable under section 636 of the Code of Civil Procedure as the will
of a citizen of another state or country; and the only question to be determined
in this case is, which state of the American Union has the best claim to her
citizenship, a question, which, as we have already seen, turns upon domicile;
and there is no other state whose citizenship she can claim, according to the
evidence in this record, with as good right as the State of California.
Massachusetts, the place of her marital abode, has not been entered in the
competition, and we must decide between California and New York. As between
these two states, California was surely the state of her legal domicile,
acquired by choice and by residing therein. Furthermore, this California
domicile has not been supplanted by a later domicile acquired in New York. It
results that the trial court committed no error in considering the testatrix a
citizen of the State of California, for the purposes of admitting this will to
probate.

The judgment will therefore be affirmed, and it is so ordered,
with costs against the appellant.

Avanceña, C. J., Johnson, Malcolm, Villamor, Ostrand,
Romualdez, and Villa-Real, JJ., concur.