Legal Underpinnings for Formulating (And Defending) Estate PlansLegal Underpinnings for Formulating (And Defending) Estate Plans

A U.S. Supreme Court Justice’s comment on an important criminal law rule is instructive.

In January 1843, Daniel M’Naghten, suffering from delusions of persecution, had a fancied grievance against Prime Minister Robert Peel. He traveled to London to assassinate him but mistakenly shot Peel’s secretary, Edward Drummond, who died from the wound several days later.¹

M’Naghten was found not guilty by reason of insanity. As Lord Chief Justice Tindal put it:  “. . . the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature or quality of the act he was doing; or, if he did know it, that he was not aware he was doing what was wrong.” Thus the birth of the “M’Naghten² rule” in England, which a...