Kimbel v. Kimbel

14 A.D. 570, 43 N.Y.S. 900
CourtAppellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
DecidedFebruary 15, 1897
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 14 A.D. 570 (Kimbel v. Kimbel) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Kimbel v. Kimbel, 14 A.D. 570, 43 N.Y.S. 900 (N.Y. Ct. App. 1897).

Opinion

Bradley, J.:

Action for dower. The plaintiff is. the widow of Anthony Kimbel, deceased. He left his will, which was admitted to probate and record. By it he gave the plaintiff §1,000, to be paid to her within sixty days after his death. By the following and third clause he bequeathed to her all his furniture in his Hew York residence.' By the fourth clause he bequeathed to her and his children all his engravings, pictures and books in that residence, to be divided equally between them. His children were seven in number. By the fifth clause he bequeathed to the executors of his will §50,000 in trust, to invest the same and pay the income to the plaintiff in quarterly or semi-annual payments during her life. By the sixth clause he devised and bequeathed all ‘the rest, residue and remainder of his estate, real and personal, to his children, share and share alike. And the following is the tenth clause of his will: “ For the purpose of dividing my estate to pay the, legacies or devises hereinbefore contained, or for the more convenient managing of my estate, or for any other reason that may commend itself to my executors hereinafter named, I hereby authorize and empower them, or the survivor of them, to sell all, or such part, of my real estate, at such time and upon such terms as they, or the survivor of them, may deem [572]*572advisable, either at public or private sale, and to give good and sufficient deeds and conveyance thereof.”

Those above mentioned are the only provisions of the will requiring any attention for the purposes of the questions arising for consideration on this, review. The controversy presented by the issues is whether the plaintiff shall be put to her election to accept the provisions of the will in her behalf or waive the benefit of them and take her dower interest in the realty. In other words, the question is whether the bequests in the will to the plaintiff, andin her behalf, were made to her in lien of dower. The court at Special Term,, in an able opinion, reached a conclusion in the affirmative, of that proposition. We are unable to adopt that view of the provisions of the will.

In the early history of the common law dower was recognized as a right, and thereafter had its support, and dower has since become the subject of declaratory statute.in this State. (1 R. S. 740, § 1.) The statute provides that if provision be made for her by will in lieu of her dower, she shall make her election whether she will take such provision or will be endowed of the lands of her husband. (Id. 741, § 13.) The will in question does not in terms provide that the bequests to the plaintiff are.in lieu of dower, nor can such be the effect unless rendered so by clear’and manifest implication from the provisions of the will, and such implication must be founded on the fact that the claim of dower is inconsistent with or so repugnant to' the disposing provisions of the will as to defeat their execution. (Fuller v. Yates, 8 Paige, 325; Sanford v. Jackson, 10 id. 266 ; Konvalinka v. Schlegel, 104 N. Y. 125.)

The reason for the strict‘rule of construction and interpretation of the provisions of a will, bearing, upon the question of intent of a testator in such case, is in the fact that dower is favored in the law, and the necessity of the widow to elect whether she will relinquish or ' retain her right to it is not permitted to rest upon doubt or uncertainty. And, although, there has been some apparent conflict in its •application by the courts, the principle has with substantial uniformity been such in England and' in this country. In the early ■case in this State of Adsit v. Adsit (2 Johns. Ch. 448) maybe found •an interesting and instructive review by the chancellor of English cases on the subject, and he said that, to permit such implication as [573]*573to require the widow to elect, the claim of dower must be inconsistent with the will and repugnant to its dispositions, or some of them.”

It cannot be assumed from the extent of the pecuniary provision made by the will of a husband to his wife that he intended it in lieu of dower. The view on that subject, as expressed by the chancellor in Fuller v. Yates (8 Paige, 325), was : “ Taking the whole disposition which the testator has made of his property into consideration, it can hardly be said he intended to give her dower in addition to the testamentary dispositions in her favor; and probably if the question of dower had occurred to him, he would have inserted a provision in the will declaring that the dispositions in her favor should be in lieu of dower in the residue of his estate. But it is not sufficient to bar her dower that he did not think on the sub ject; as that would only indicate a want of intention either one way or the other.” The provisions of the will in the present case relied upon to support the alleged intent of the testator, that the bequests to the plaintiff were made in lieu of dower, are those of the sixth and tenth clauses, ■ to the effect that he gives all the residue of his estate, real and personal, to his children, and gives to the executors power of sale for the purposes mentioned, and expresses the grant of power “ to give good and sufficient deeds and conveyance thereof.”

The gift of the rest, residue and remainder .of his estate, real and personal, to his children, was not inconsistent with the right of dower" of his widow in the real estate. Her interest, inchoate until the death of the testator, ffien became consummate in the real property as to- which there was a concurrence of his seisin and the marriage relation of- the testator and the plaintiff, except so far as she had barred her dower during his life. The gift of the residue of his estate, after making some provision for her, does not purport to include her dower interest in such residue, but only such estate as was his to give. And this would be so if she had been included as one of the beneficiaries of the' gift and devise of the residue. In Konvalinka v. Schlegel (104 N. Y. 125) the testator, by the terms of his will, gave all the rest, residue and remainder of his estate to the executors to sell and divide the proceeds equally among his wife and children. The question there was whether the widow was required to elect. The court, in holding that she was not put to [574]*574her election, remarked that the dower is never excluded by a provision in a will for a wife “except by express words or by necessary implication,” and that the only sufficient and adequate demonstration which, in the absence of express words, will put the widow to her election, is a clear incompatibility, arising on the face ■ of the will, between ia claim of dower and a claim to the benefit given by the will.” This is the accepted and settled doctrine of the adjudicated cases on the subject.

•The provisions of the tenth .clause created no trust, but a mere power of sale, and nothing’ is added to the effect of it as bearing upon the question under consideration by the expression of power to give good and sufficient deeds and conveyance. The power to sell would, by implication, include the power to convey by deed all the estate which he could authorize' the executors to sell. This is not necessarily inconsistent with the existence of the incumbrance of the dower interest of the widow, and, therefore, the allowance of her •claim of dower in the real property will not necessarily defeat any of its provisions. ( Wood v. Wood, 5 Paige, 896; Lewis v. Smith, 9 N. Y. 502, 510; Matter of Accounting of Frazer, 92 id. 239, 249;

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
14 A.D. 570, 43 N.Y.S. 900, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/kimbel-v-kimbel-nyappdiv-1897.