Middleton Estate

21 Pa. D. & C.2d 18
CourtPennsylvania Orphans' Court, Bucks County
DecidedDecember 24, 1959
DocketNo. 3; 31, 564
StatusPublished

This text of 21 Pa. D. & C.2d 18 (Middleton Estate) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Pennsylvania Orphans' Court, Bucks County primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Middleton Estate, 21 Pa. D. & C.2d 18 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1959).

Opinion

Satterthwaite, J.,

In 1955 this court decided that the trustee of the within estate was not precluded by any express restriction to the contrary in decedent’s will and was therefore authorized to invest in corporate stock as permitted by the Fiduciaries Investment Act of May 26, 1949, P. L. 1828, as amended, 20 PS §821.1, et seq.: Middleton Estate (No. 2), 8 D. & C. 2d 133. No appeal was taken from the decision. In 1958 the Supreme Court decided three eases involving the same general subject matter: Kelsey Estate, 393 Pa. 513; Jeffries Estate, 393 Pa. 523; Saunders Estate, 393 Pa. 527. The with[19]*19in trustee, believing it possible that the latter decisions might have affected the basis for our earlier ruling, has again brought the investment clause of decedent’s will before us for reconsideration in light thereof.

The question again is presented by a guardian and trustee ad litem, appointed for the purpose, who has filed exceptions to a new partial account setting forth nominal losses on transactions in two selected items of the investment portfolio. One was a loss of $80.99 on the sale of five shares of Radio Corporation of America first preferred stock which had been purchased in 1955 after our decision in that year and sold in 1959 subsequent to the above mentioned decisions of the Supreme Court. The other was a loss of $17.93 arising from the purchase and immediate resale on March 30, 1959, of five shares of E. I. DuPoint deNemours & Co. common stock. Just as in the earlier proceedings, counsel for the trustee and the guardian and trustee ad litem have stipulated all the requisite facts, so that the only question presented is the propriety of these investments under possibly new interpretations of the law which may be dictated by the Supreme Court pronouncements in the cited cases.

No useful purpose will be served by repeating all the background facts, detailed provisions of decedent’s will, review and analysis of the earlier authorities and full quotation of the statutory language. These matters are set forth at length in our former opinion, which we have carefully reconsidered and now reaffirm. For present purposes, it will suffice to note that decedent died in 1888 leaving a will which created trusts which still subsist, and which provided with respect to investments, in part, as follows:

“And further in Trust within the space of two years from the time of my death to convert into cash such of my estate as shall not consist of such securities as are hereinafter mentioned and to invest the money so [20]*20realized at their discretion in the following securities, viz. . . . [enumerating bonds of the State of Pennsylvania and of the United States, and bonds and mortgages secured on geographically limited real estate in central Philadelphia and subject to additional restrictions thereon] ... In case any investment of my estate shall be paid off then my said Trustees shall reinvest in such securities as I have named.”

The controlling statutory provision is section 18 of the Fiduciaries Investment Act of May 26,1949, P. L. 1828, 20 PS §821.18, which recognizes the right of a testator or settlor to prescribe investment standards, and accords priority thereto over the provisions of the act if there be a conflict. The section closes with this final sentence:

“In the absence, however, of an express restriction to the contrary in the trust instrument, the fiduciary may invest in any investment authorized by this act.”

We believe that neither Kelsey Estate nor Jeffries Estate, supra, in applying this legislative language to the particular phraseologies of the respective trust instruments there involved, is presently controlling. In both, the trustees were authorized in general to make investments without being confined to “legáis”, but were expressly denied the right to invest in corporate stocks, in so many words of settlor or testator. They are in point, and, when the occasion is presented, will require reexamination of earlier lower court decisions, in that class of cases referred to in our earlier opinion (8 D. & C. 2d, at 137) which held that particular restrictive provisions should be construed to apply only to the settlor-given power to invest in “nonlegals,” and not to affect the law-given power to avail of all “legáis.” But the within trust provisions do not pose this question.

Saunders Estate, supra, however, involved trust language which might at first glance seem to be more [21]*21closely analagous to that appearing in the instant case. There, after authorizing retention of investments which she had made in her lifetime, whether “legal” or not, testatrix further provided:

“I direct that my Executor and Trustee shall have power to invest and reinvest in Government Bonds only or Bonds guaranteed by the Government.” (Italics supplied.)

The Supreme Court held that the expressed intent of testatrix must be given effect and that therefore this language was likewise a mandatory restriction which prohibited any investments other than those specified. Emphasis was laid on the unequivocal use by testatrix of such imperative words as “direct”, “shall” and “only”, and it was held that in view thereof it was of no controlling significance, notwithstanding section 18 of the Fiduciaries Investment Act, that testatrix had not also spelled out an express prohibition against general “legal” investments in the phraseology of the subsequent statute.

The only reported cases in the lower courts on the broad question since Saunders Estate have uniformly held, after giving due regard to that decision and its companions in the Supreme Court, that particular language in the respective trust instruments under consideration therein, did not amount to express restrictions precluding investment in other “legáis.” Two of these are of no present moment. They are Earle Estate, 16 D. & C. 2d 643, and Henderson Estate, 19 D. & C. 2d 411; both involved bare permissive enumerations of particular types of authorized investments, with neither an express prohibition against others, nor an imperative and mandatory direction to avail of those specified to the necessary exclusion of others.

Foulke Estate, 18 D. & C. 2d 773, and Betts Trust, 9 Fiduc. Rep. 647, involved testamentary provisions [22]*22more closely related to those presented in the instant ease. In the Foulke case testator left his residuary estate to the trustee “in trust that said Company will hold and invest the same, in good Real Estate security and pay the net income or interest thereof . . .” The court, sustaining exceptions to the adjudication of the auditing judge who had ruled to the contrary, distinguished Saunders Estate on the ground that the within testator did not use the words “direct” or “only”, and that his use of the word “will”, while arguable to be imperative, may equally be considered “merely the employment of the future tense, investment being made of course only after the testament became operative, just as in the use of the word ‘will’ in the phrase ‘will hold’.” Accordingly, it was held that the quoted clause of the will was merely a suggestion of testator, stating a preference for real estate security; it did not prohibit anything, and hence was not an “express restriction” under section 18 of the Fiduciaries Investment Act.

In the Betts case, testator in providing for the investments of the trust directed that the trustee “shall put and place the same out at interest in mortgages and ground rents, and pay over the interest thereon . .

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Related

Kelsey Estate
143 A.2d 42 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1958)
Saunders Estate
143 A.2d 367 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1958)
Jeffries Estate
143 A.2d 391 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1958)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
21 Pa. D. & C.2d 18, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/middleton-estate-paorphctbucks-1959.