Is a defendant's written promise to reimburse a stranger for expenses incurred in caring for the defendant's adult son enforceable when the care was not requested by the defendant and rests only on a moral obligation?

Daniel Wyman's son, a twenty-five-year-old man who had long since left his father's household, fell ill on returning from a foreign country and was among strangers. Mills took him in and gave him shelter, care, and comfort until he died. The son was not under the defendant's care, and Mills did not act at the defendant's request. After learning of the death, Wyman, moved by a transient feeling of gratitude, promised in writing to pay Mills for the expenses Mills had incurred. Wyman later refused to honor the promise, and Mills sued to enforce it. Mills also argued that Wyman owed a legal duty under a statute requiring lineal kindred to support poor relations likely to become chargeable to a town, but the record contained no facts establishing the conditions of that statute.

Mills sued Wyman in the Court of Common Pleas to enforce the written promise. The Court of Common Pleas directed a nonsuit against Mills. Mills brought the case to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, which reviewed whether the nonsuit was proper.

(Parker, C.J.)

No. A written promise to pay for benefits previously conferred on a third party, made without a request and without any legal consideration, is unenforceable. A promise without consideration cannot be enforced by action, and that rule applies universally even where refusing to perform appears disgraceful.

Moral obligation alone is not a sufficient consideration. It supports an express promise only where a legal or valuable consideration existed at some earlier time, and positive law has merely removed an impediment to enforcement. Examples are a debt barred by the statute of limitations, a debt incurred during infancy, and a debt discharged in bankruptcy. In those cases a quid pro quo existed originally, so the later promise revives a real prior obligation. Here, no preexisting legal obligation or equivalent benefit ran to Wyman.

A father is legally bound to support his minor children, but that duty ends when the child reaches adulthood and becomes his own agent. Wyman's son was twenty-five and living apart, so his debts created no obligation on his father, and a later promise founded on them has no binding force. Wyman never requested the care, and none can be presumed.

The statute requiring lineal kindred to support poor relations does not supply a legal duty. That obligation arises only when a court adjudicates the necessary facts: the relative's settlement, the likelihood of becoming chargeable, and the defendant's ability to pay. None of those facts was shown. The nonsuit was therefore correct, and judgment is entered for the defendant.