Metcalf v. First Parish in Framingham

128 Mass. 370, 1880 Mass. LEXIS 88
CourtMassachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
DecidedFebruary 26, 1880
StatusPublished
Cited by102 cases

This text of 128 Mass. 370 (Metcalf v. First Parish in Framingham) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Metcalf v. First Parish in Framingham, 128 Mass. 370, 1880 Mass. LEXIS 88 (Mass. 1880).

Opinion

Gray, C. J.

The testator by the first article of his will bequeaths to the First Parish in Framingham “ fifty shares of the stock of the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad Company,” and also “ the further sum of five thousand dollars.” By the second article he bequeaths to the town of Framingham the sum of five hundred dollars and fifty shares of the stock of the same corporation. By the third article he bequeaths fifty shares of the same stock to the Association for the Relief of Aged and Indigent Females, and by the fourth article a like number of such shares to the Home for Aged Men, each of which is a corporation established in Boston. Then follow other bequests, six [372]*372of which are of various amounts of stock in the same corporation, and the rest are pecuniary legacies, as to one of which, to his brother Gardiner, the testator directs that it shall be paid to the legatee in Dayton and Michigan Railroad bonds at par, “provided I should be in possession of the same at the time of my decease.” The will concludes with a residuary devise and bequest of “all the rest, residue and remainder of my property of every kind, real, personal and mixed,” to and for the benefit of his nephews and nieces, with a like direction for the payment in railroad bonds of the portions of the children of his brother Gar-diner ; and a clause empowering his executors to sell and convey all real estate and personal property, “ excepting what I have hereinbefore disposed of.” The bequests of stock in the Pitts-burg, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad Company collectively include six hundred and ten shares; and it is agreed that the testator at the date of his will, and also at the time of his death, owned one thousand and ninety shares thereof.

The first question presented by the bill is whether the bequests of shares in the stock of the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad Company are specific or general, This depends on the apparent intent of the testator. We are unanimously of opinion that his intention that these bequests should be specific clearly appears upon a view of the whole will, and especially from the following considerations: 1st. He not only makes many bequests of stock in this corporation and many pecuniary legacies to different persons and institutions, but in the first and in the second items of the will he makes to the same legatees bequests both of stock and of money, a fact much relied on by Lord Chancellor Cairns in Kermode v. Macdonald, L. R. 3 Ch. 584, as showing that a legacy of a sum invested in stock was specific. 2d. He expressly makes the general legacies to Gardiner and his children payable in certain railroad bonds, if owned by the testator at the time of his death, and makes no such direction as to the legacies of the stock in question. 3d. In the clause empowering the executors to sell, the exception of “what I have hereinbefore disposed of” evidently refers to his numerous legacies of this stock, and not merely to the bonds mentioned only in the bequests to Gardiner and his children.

[373]*373The testator’s intention to bequeath specifically shares which he owned appears to us to be much clearer than in White v. Winchester, 6 Pick. 48, in which the mere fact of the testator’s owning stock exactly equal in amount to that bequeathed was held by this court, in a judgment delivered by Mr. Justice Wilde, after full consideration of the early English cases, to raise a strong presumption that the testator intended to give the stock of which he was the owner; and quite as plain as if the testator, in speaking of the shares bequeathed, had used the word “ my,” which is generally admitted to be sufficient to make a bequest specific. 2 Wms. Ex’ors. (6th Am. ed.) 1255. Upon a careful examination of the numerous and not always consistent cases cited at the bar, they do not appear to us to afford sufficient ground for a different conclusion.

The other question in the case arises under the tenth article of the will, which is as follows: “ I give and bequeath unto George P. Metcalf, in trust and confidence however, one hundred shares of the stock of the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad Company, for the benefit of Nancy Green, sister of my deceased wife, and William Green, husband of said Nancy, for and during their natural lives, as follows : First, during the life of said Nancy, the net income of the same shall be paid over semiannually to said Nancy. In case said Nancy should die before said William, then at the decease of said Nancy said trustee shall transfer one half of said stock in equal parts to said Association and said Home. The income of the remainder shall be paid to said William as aforesaid during his natural life. Second. In case the said William should die before said Nancy, then at the decease of said Nancy the whole of said stock shall be transferred in equal shares to said Association and said Home, and said trust estate shall cease.”

The eleventh article contains another bequest in similar form in all respects, except in putting the testator’s brother Charles Phipps in place of Nancy Green and his wife Sophronia Phipps in place of William Green; inserting after the words “her natural life ” this clause: “ and at her decease the remainder of said trust estate shall be transferred to said Association and said Home as aforesaid; ” and adding at the end of the whole bequest the following: “ By said Association and said Home, as [374]*374mentioned in items 10 and 11,1 mean and intend the Association for the Relief of Aged and Indigent Females named in item and the Home for Aged Men mentioned in items 3 and 4.”

Nancy Green having died before her husband, and half the stock mentioned in the tenth article having been thereupon transferred to the two charitable institutions, the question is whether, upon the subsequent death of her husband, the remaining half of this stock is likewise to be transferred to the charities, or falls into the residue of the testator’s estate.

^ The decision of this question doubtless depends upon the intention of the testator, as manifested by the words that he has used, and an omission to express his intention cannot be supplied by conjecture. But if a reading of the whole will produces a conviction that the testator must necessarily have intended an interest to be given which is not bequeathed by express and formal words, the court must supply the defect by implication, and so mould the language of the testator as to carry into effect, as far as possible, the intention which it is of opinion that Re has on the whole will sufficiently declared. Ferson v. Dodge, 23 Pick. 287. Towns v. Wentworth, 11 Moore P. C. 526. Abbott v. Middleton, 7 H. L. Cas. 68. Greenwood v. Greenwood, 5 Ch. D. 954.

In Weston v. Weston, 125 Mass. 268, for instance, the testator gave the residue of his estate to trustees, and directed them, out of the income, to support his wife during her life, and to pay annuities to his two children; and upon the death of the wife to transfer the principal to the children in equal shares, if they both survived her, and, if either of them died in her lifetime without issue, to transfer the principal to the survivor; and made no specific provision for the case of a child dying in the lifetime of the wife, leaving issue. But it was held that the title in half the principal vested in each child immediately, and upon its death leaving issue went to its representatives, and not to the testator’s next of kin.

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Bluebook (online)
128 Mass. 370, 1880 Mass. LEXIS 88, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/metcalf-v-first-parish-in-framingham-mass-1880.