In re the Estate of Aman

168 Misc. 471, 5 N.Y.S.2d 962, 1938 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1763
CourtNew York Surrogate's Court
DecidedJuly 15, 1938
StatusPublished

This text of 168 Misc. 471 (In re the Estate of Aman) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New York Surrogate's Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
In re the Estate of Aman, 168 Misc. 471, 5 N.Y.S.2d 962, 1938 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1763 (N.Y. Super. Ct. 1938).

Opinion

Feely, S.

Testator, by his last will dated December 12, 1932, divided the residue of his estate into seventeen equal parts, four of which he placed in trust in the hands of a nephew for the benefit of the latter’s father. The will directs that a certain mortgage for $10,000, which he held against Cletus Aman, another son of the beneficiary of the trust, should be regarded as part of the trust fund; and directions are added as to what should be done if the mortgage were more, or were less, than the four-seventeenths share. When testator died on March 11, 1937, there was interest due him on this mortgage from January 1, 1933, which he had been accepting at the rate of five per cent, although the mortgage was written for six. At the less rate there was due him at death $2,097.21; and no interest has been paid the estate since his death. There is a first mortgage for $8,000 on the same property, held by a savings bank. The executors claim that the will requires the $10,000 mortgage be treated as a specific legacy, which carries with it not only the interest from and after the testator’s death, but also the arrears due before he had died; and they have accordingly treated those arrears, in the sum of $2,097.21, as going to form part of the trust fund, together with the $10,000 principal of this mortgage. This addition is resisted by the special guardian for a residuary legatee of the trust fund. The account indicates that the four-seventeenths share going to this trust will exceed by some two or three thousand dollars the total of $12,097.21.

Assuming the direction to the trustee to accept this $10,000 mortgage as a part of the trust fund ”— which as a whole was to be composed of four-seventeenths of testator’s net estate, without regard to this mortgage being more, or less than $10,000, or possibly even non-existent — requires the trust legacy to be considered as one of a specific subject, rather than one of a sum certain in money so secured (See Matter of Solomon, 165 App. Div. 276), or thus made conveniently payable, then the difficulty arises not so much out of the general principles applicable to legacies of specific things without any implied equivalent, as it does out of the peculiarity both of the various subject matters to which those principles are applied, and also out of the variety found in the patterns of division.

[473]*473There is no doubt in principle that a legacy of a specific productive thing carries with it, after its kind, its “ accessories ” (Matter of Strasenburgh, 136 Misc. 91), its “ appendants ” (Matter of Althaus, 94 id. 43) and all accretions and increment thereon ” (Matter of Michaelis, 110 id. 185, 189; Matter of Gans, 60 id. 282, 286); which are also called its “ produce ” (Platt v. Moore, 1 Dem. 191), or its “increase” (Murphy v. Marcellus, Id. 288); but if inanimate and unproductive articles of property are specifically bequeathed, and not delivered, it does not follow that the legatee is entitled to interest upon their value out of the estate by way oi recompense for detention — if withheld, the remedy is against the executor personally, (Isenhart v. Brown, 2 Edw. Ch. 341, 347). In the class of primitive cases, e. g., the mare in foal, the unshorn sheep, or the growing crop (Stall v. Wilbur, 77 N. Y. 158; Matter of Chamberlain, 140 id. 390), the line of demarcation is suggested by a hkening of interest in default to “ a fruit fallen from the tree in the life of the testator ” (Matter of Althaus, 94 Misc. 43, 48), but in the more complicated cases arising out of social obligations and the symbols in which they are embodied, it is not so easy to trace the causality that brings forth the “ produce,” the “ increase ” and “ increment,” or that draws unto itself the “ accessory,” the “ accretion ” and the “ appendant.” A corporation, for instance, does not produce dividends of any sort with any natural or normal constancy. Dividends come if and when they are earned or declared; but interest on money or securities is continuous or constant, rather than contingent.

In point of time no doubt exists that in all productive sorts oí specific subject-matters those increments or accessions that accrued after the death of testator follow their principal, as a natural or conventional part thereof, into the hands of the specific legatee. In regard to those that accrued before testator’s death, the cases are not in accord as to legacies of specific corporate stock. (See 89 A. L. R. 1125.) It has been held that such a legacy did not carry with it the ordinary dividends declared before the death of testator (Matter of Leavitt, 86 Misc. 609); but the contrary was held in Matter of Adams (90 id. 254); and it has been held that a dividend earned on such stock in testator’s lifetime, but not declared until after his death, was to be apportioned. (Matter of Hastings, 6 Dem. 307, and see Matter of Brandreth, 64 App. Div. 566.)

However, those and like rulings do not apply in any way to such specifically given subjects as bonds, notes or mortgages that naturally or usually bear interest continuously; and in this respect differ essentially from all kinds of corporate dividends. Underhill in his Law of Wills (p. 560) states generally that “ a legacy of a [474]*474bond or of a note carries with it, in the absence of statute requiring apportionment, all the interest which has accrued to the death of the testator.” '

So, a legacy of a specific bond was held to carry with it the right to the interest represented by a coupon that was found still attached to the bond at the death of testator, and this was put on the principle that such a legacy “ carried the bond in such form as the testator had left it ” (Ogden v. Pattee, 149 Mass. 82; 21 N. E. 227); and a like ruling was made in Matter of Boyer (N. Y. L. J. June 12, 1915, p. 1079).

So, a legacy of “ my life insurance ” of $10,000 in a specified company, “ carried with the gift all of its accretions.” (Matter of Gans, 60 Misc. 282, 286.) The executors rely greatly upon the ruling that where testatrix had bequeathed the mortgage now held by me ” on a specified parcel of land, “ on which there is now unpaid the sum of * * * $45,000,” and then died in the midst of an interest period, that the mortgage so bequeathed carried with it, as " appendant to it,” the unpaid interest that had accrued before the death of the testatrix, as well as that which accrued thereafter. (Matter of Althaus, 94 Misc. 43.)

Owing to the fact that a legacy of an interest-bearing debt most always describes the debt specifically as the property of testator, it is generally found that a legacy of a mortgaged debt, carries with it all interest accrued and unpaid at the death of the testator. In many of these cases the factor of testator’s particular intention is stressed. In Matter of Clark (16 Misc. 405) there was a bequest of “ All the mortgages (including notes and other obligations therein described and for which the mortgages are security).” The question arose whether the interest accrued thereon up to the time of decedent’s death belonged to the legatees, or to the estate. The surrogate declined to accept the theory of counsel that the solution depended on whether or not the bequest of these mortgages was a general, specific or demonstrative legacy.

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Related

Stall v. . Wilbur
77 N.Y. 158 (New York Court of Appeals, 1879)
In re the Final Judicial Settlement of the Account of Proceedings of Kane
64 A.D. 566 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1901)
In re the Judicial Settlement of the Account of Solomon
165 A.D. 276 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1914)
Isenhart v. Brown
2 Edw. Ch. 341 (New York Court of Chancery, 1834)
In re Estate of Gans
6 Mills Surr. 526 (New York Surrogate's Court, 1908)
In re the Estate of Leavitt
12 Mills Surr. 373 (New York Surrogate's Court, 1914)
In re the Construction of the Last Will & Testament of Althaus
16 Mills Surr. 252 (New York Surrogate's Court, 1915)
In re the Estate of Grinnell
115 Misc. 722 (New York Surrogate's Court, 1921)
In re the Construction of the Last Will & Testament of Strasenburgh
136 Misc. 91 (New York Surrogate's Court, 1928)
Ogden v. Pattee
21 N.E. 227 (Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, 1889)

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Bluebook (online)
168 Misc. 471, 5 N.Y.S.2d 962, 1938 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1763, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/in-re-the-estate-of-aman-nysurct-1938.