In Campbell v. Thomas (73 AD3d 103, 897 NYS2d 460 [2010]), it was held that a woman who married a mentally incompetent man may have had a legal right to an elective share in his estate as surviving spouse, but forfeited any rights that flowed from the marital relationship by procuring the marriage through overreaching and undue influence. Citing Riggs v. Palmer (supra), Matter of Covert (supra), Matter of Lonergan (63 NYS2d 307 [1946]), Barker v. Kallash, 63 NY2d 19, 468 NE2d 39, 479 NYS2d 201 [1984]) and Carr v. Hoy, 2 NY2d 185, 139 NE2d 531, 158 NYS2d 572 [1957]), the Second Department held that the Supreme Court, sitting as a court of equity as well as law, was empowered to grant relief consistent with the equitable principle that "no one shall be permitted to profit by his own fraud, or to take advantage of his own wrong, or to found any claim upon his own iniquity, or to acquire property by his own crime" (Campbell v. Thomas at 116 quoting Riggs at 511). The Court went on to find that: "while the wrongdoers in Riggs and Lonergan were already in a position to benefit from their victims' estates, in the present case, it was the wrongful conduct itself that put Nidia in a position to obtain benefits that were available by virtue of being Howard's spouse. Thus, while the measures taken by Nidia were certainly not as extreme as those taken in Riggs and Lonergan, the causal link between the wrongdoing and the benefits she sought was actually more direct in this case. . . . "We find this result to be compelled not only by the need to protect vulnerable incapacitated individuals and their rightful heirs from overreaching and undue influence, but to protect the integrity of the courts themselves. It is 'an old, old principle' that a court, 'even in the absence of express statutory warrant,' must not ' " 'allow itself to be made the instrument of wrong, no less on account of its detestation of every thing conducive to wrong than on account of that regard which it should entertain for its own character and dignity' " ' " (Campbell at 118-119, quoting Matter of Hogan v. Supreme Ct. of State of N.Y., 295 NY 92, 96, 65 NE2d 181 [1946] ).