Gift.
Upon findings by a judge who heard a suit in equity against an administrator to enforce an alleged gift of personal property to the plaintiff by the intestate in his lifetime, that the intestate had delivered property in the form of securities to the plaintiff, an elderly woman, telling her that he gave them to her; that she accepted them; that the relations between them for years had been those of a mother and a son; and that a few days later he had complied with her request to place such property in his safe deposit box and then had given her the key to the box, a finding of a completed gift inter vivos was warranted.
WAIT, J.
No new question of law or of fact is involved herein. The defendant administrator with the will annexed of Hugh Howard MacDonald appeals from a decree establishing a valid gift inter vivos of certain personal property claimed as her own by the plaintiff, and ordering the delivery of the property to the plaintiff. The evidence is not reported; but the trial judge filed findings of fact. It is the defendant's contention that the findings are inconsistent with the conclusion that the deceased made the gift in question. He does not dispute that unless this inconsistency appears and they are clearly wrong the findings will not be reversed on appeal. Mongeau v. McKay, 281 Mass. 101. Armstrong v. Orler, 220 Mass. 112.
We do not see profit in a statement of the findings and a discussion of the arguments addressed to us after unsuccessful reliance upon them before the trial judge. A gift inter vivos of one half of his property to one whom he has for years regarded as a mother, leaving the donor possessed of a very substantial sum for future use or for disposition elsewhere, does not seem to us so incredible a proceeding that we must reverse the finding made below. The case is well within our decisions in Mulloy v. Charlestown Five Cents Savings Bank, 285 Mass. 101, 105, Robinson v. Pero, 272 Mass. 482, Pierce v. Boston Five Cents Savings Bank, 129 Mass. 425. See Millett v. Temple, 280 Mass. 543.
Decree affirmed with costs.