Cook v. Stevens

134 A. 195, 125 Me. 378, 1926 Me. LEXIS 72
CourtSupreme Judicial Court of Maine
DecidedAugust 10, 1926
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 134 A. 195 (Cook v. Stevens) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Judicial Court of Maine primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Cook v. Stevens, 134 A. 195, 125 Me. 378, 1926 Me. LEXIS 72 (Me. 1926).

Opinion

Dunn, J.

The will of Joseph C. Stevens, following the usual introductory clause,' nominates, an executor and trustee, makes minor legacies, and proceeds, in abbreviated form where of less intimate connection with meaning in these two suits, as follows:

“After the few bequests all the remainder of my estate, .... I give . . . ■• in trust,” while any son or'any annuitant of mine lives, for the annuities hereby created and for the bequest conditionally given, and to divide the income then remaining “among my living sons and the families of' such of my sons as may have deceased, a share to each son, and an equal share to each family of a deceased son who may leave one or more children,” until the appointed time arrives at which the trust is to terminate. .

What comes next is:

“I give to the widow of any deceased .son without one.or more children by any one of my sons.two thousand dollars.....” .

Then are these.words:

“And after the termination of this trust I direct that all the remainder of my estate be equally divided among my grandchildren share and share alike. .. . .'”

There is inhibition against the transfer of claim or rights, not restricted to beneficiaries of the trust, but applied generally to beneficiaries throughout its period, on penalty of forfeiting.

It was a spendthrift trust (Robert v. Stevens, 84 Maine, 325), limited to the death of the last son, which occurred in this year, 1926. The trustee was authorized to lease the real estate in all or part. [380]*380“Unproductive estate,” the will impliedly thus comprehending but realty, could have been sold under court license, and personal property might have been sold, and the proceeds from either 'source reinvested.

A will speaks from the death of the testator, but for the purpose of determining a testator’s intention from the language used in a will, it should be construed as an entirety, and every part be reconciled and given effect if possible, as of the date of its execution, circumstance illumined by the surroundings that were then extrinsic.

In 1881, when this will was made, its maker was in widowerhood. His eldest son had died leaving wife and child surviving. There were only three living sons, of whom two, Frederick and Thomas, respectively of name, were married; the record is indefinite if ever the third had wife; certain is it that he left no descendant. Mae was the single child of Frederick. Thomas had two children, Grace and Charles, and no more.

And so the testator was relatived, less than two years afterward, when he died.

Of estate, the personalty amounted to about $8,000; the realty was certain Bangor stores. The net annual income from both real and personal was approximately $3,000; since then increased rentals have quadrupled that.

The annuities and the conditional bequest are aside. No son of the testator is living now, so the trust is ended.

Frederick’s daughter Mae, who on marriage became Todd, lived longer than her father. She was outlived by her husband and four children. Grace Stevens, now surnamed Clark, the daughter of the last of the sons, still survives. Charles, her brother, died in 1888, aged twelve years. Under the statute then in force, propinquity in kin and heirship found only the boy’s father, and when that father died without leaving a will, the law cast the inheritance exclusively from him to his daughter, Grace Stevens Clark.

Two cases are presented for consideration. The first concerns accrued and undistributed income; the other the corpus of the estate.

In the administration of the trust, the assumption seems to have been, when a son died not survived by offspring, that the income as to him should cease, on the ground that the will constituted one entire trust scheme, subject to change by future death, among living sons and the child-embracing families of dead ones. But when in [381]*3811925 Mrs. Todd died intestate, whether and who of her husband and children were entitled to share in the income from the trust fund became of question.

Will construction cases fill a good-sized volume, but no chart more definitely marks a channel that can be depended upon to follow, than testamentary words derive their particular significance from the context. One will may or not be so expressed as to furnish a guide toward the same conclusion in another. Different testators may speak in much the same verbiage from different viewpoints to different purposes; it being as true today as when the epigram was penned, “that no will has a brother.”

The goal of interpretation is not the intention simply, but the legal consequences of the indicated intention of the individual testator. If it be uncertain, his expressed or implied meaning must be gathered as a fact, gathered from what he said in the whole instrument, read in the light which the position that was attending continues to shed. These principles of law, generally adopted by all courts, lead to the point which opposite arguments present by logic and analogy.

“Family,” to speak in the singular of the word which the will pluralizes, was applied in the initial using even broader than synonymously with kindred or relations by consanguinity. Obviously, the testator was desirous of doing impartially among living sons and the families of dead sons, where the dead left, surviving, one child or more; each son and family to take in the same proportion. Transposal of the order of clauses disencumbers testamental design from the cloud of words with which it is covered. To every woman widowed by the death of any son of his, the testator gave absolutely and in the same quantity, not from the income let it be noted, but by charge on the body of the trust. The income, apart from that apportioned in other respects, was for the living sons and the family of a son dead leaving child or children. Where there is childless widow, there shall be bounty, definitely said the "testator in his way of defining. The text plainly implies the inclusion of every widowed mother. For every widow having no child, bequest from the corpus. The income, with no accumulating feature and limited to lives in being, for each living son and the family of any son dead; family here embracing widow and at least one child, in differentiation of a widowed mother from a widow merely. Of course, were there no widow, then child or [382]*382children would be family, in the survivorship and stead of a dead son. For them all, as the case might be, the will contained provision.

Of Frederick, as has been seen, his wife and the child were the survivors. They two made up the family, which the widow’s death narrowed. Before or after that widow’s death, in these proceedings it is inconsequential which, but at some time Frederick’s daughter married. She bore children. The daughter-mother died, leaving husband and children. That husband is not a member of his deceased wife’s father’s family.

By implication, when the term was used first, the sense of family in relationship to a dead son’s family was a sons children, plus his widow by right of representation, for the testator did not prefer a childless widow before a widowed mother; his solicitude'and bounty extended to both. When the widow of the son Frederick had died, her surviving child was yet of that son’s family, though the widower was not, because of absence in the varying shade of thought of purpose to include relations by affinity. Death takes Frederick’s child.

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Bluebook (online)
134 A. 195, 125 Me. 378, 1926 Me. LEXIS 72, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/cook-v-stevens-me-1926.