the story behind the law

Picture, if you will, a lovely wedding ceremony. The pews are strung with flowers, the church is full, and all attention is on the happy couple.

The wise old priest asks the groom, "Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wife?"

The groom, an older gentleman, answers. "I will."

The priest in turn asks the bride, "Wilt thou have this man to be thy husband?"

She too answers in the affirmative. Perhaps there is small sigh from the audience. We are, after all, hopeless romantics at heart.

The groom places a ring on his bride's finger, saying "With this ring, I thee wed. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."

The priest begins to pray. The audience is silent.

And then the groom drops dead.

The priest, acting so cooly that one might think he had grooms die on him all the time, cuts the ceremony short and pronounces the groom and bride to be man and wife.

Were they married?

The court, in a rare nod to romance, held that they were married after they had exchanged their vows. The fact that the priest pronounced them to be man and wife after the husband had died was of no consequence.

This case was a footnote in my book, an illustration of how property transfers to a wife in case a husband dies without a will. The legal issue is what we care about.

But what a story! Imagine the bride, wed and widowed on the same day. Imagine the audience lurching forward as he fell, the grim efficiency of the priest as he declared the dead man married. Imagine the shock, the terror, the tears.

In Estate of Neiderhiser was reduced to five or six lines in my casebook. Once finals are over, I'll probably forget the specific legal point it was making.

The story, however, I won't forget.