Snyder v. Snyder

182 A.D. 65, 169 N.Y.S. 396, 1918 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 7831
CourtAppellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
DecidedMarch 1, 1918
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 182 A.D. 65 (Snyder v. Snyder) 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
Snyder v. Snyder, 182 A.D. 65, 169 N.Y.S. 396, 1918 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 7831 (N.Y. Ct. App. 1918).

Opinion

Kelly, J.:

There is no doubt or confusion as to the legal principle which must govern the construction and interpretation of this will. It has been stated over and over again, and it is that the intention of the testator as expressed in the will must control. Courts are not to make new wills for those [71]*71who have gone from this world, nor can we speculate on the justice or injustice of the testator’s disposition of his property clearly expressed, as long as it is not opposed to law or public policy. The will having been admitted to probate, the testator having left no children or direct descendants surviving him, we are not concerned with the fact that having cared for his wife, he may have favored one nephew as against the other. He might do what he willed with his own, and left his fortune to strangers. The learned counsel for the parties have cited abundant authorities and precedents and have given much time and research to the always vexed question of contingent and vested remainders; their arguments and citations have been of much assistance to the court. But when the terms of a will are plain and unambiguous, it is unnecessary to resort to intricate and refined rules of construction. Out of the abundance of decisions and authorities cited, we select the following statements of the fundamental principles which must govern us, as laid down by the Court of Appeals: “ The intention of the testator being reasonably clear it is quite unnecessary to discuss the decisions made in other cases involving the vesting of property held in trust. Rules for the construction of wills are for the sole purpose of ascertaining the intention of the testator, and if the intention is clear and manifest it must control, regardless of all rules that have been formed for the purpose of determining their construction.” (Cammann v. Bailey, 210 N. Y. 19, 30, and restated in Fulton Trust Co. v. Phillips, 218 id. 573, 582.) And in Salter v. Drowne (205 N. Y. 204) the court says: The intention of the testatrix, so long as it is not contrary to some statute or to public policy, must govern. We must look for that intention in the will itself. Because wills differ in the forms in which testators express their intention it is difficult and almost impossible -to base one decision unqualifiedly upon another. Rules for the construction of wills can only.be applied when they will aid in such construction. It is a rule in the construction of wills frequently asserted and urged now by the appellants that the law favors the vesting of estates. Like all other rules in construing wills it cannot be applied when it is found that by so doing the intention of the testator would not be carried out. The law does not [72]*72hold that the trust estates mentioned are vested if it is found that the testator intended that the estate should not vest for a specified time and until the happening of specified • events.” Thus the court of last' resort reiterates the rule so often announced. The intention of the dead man as found in his will governs everything else. In ordinary disputes and litigations the contesting parties are here to battle for their respective contentions. In the case of a will, the voice of the man who made it is stilled, the hand that signed and sealed it is powerless and dead, and it is one of the greatest of the many responsibilities placed upon the courts to see to it that this silent evidence of his desire with regard to his property and estate should be made effective and should be carried out “ according to his intention,” undisturbed by the clamor of conflicting litigants.

Taking up the- disputed provisions of Mr. Engs’ will, let us consider first the claim of the children, personal representatives and next of kin to the sum of $3,000 bequeathed to the sisters of the testator. The court below held that the testator intended to vest in each of his three sisters living at the time of his death the sum of $1,000 absolutely, subject only to the life estate of the testator’s wife, and that the vesting of. each of said legacies was not contingent upon the sisters surviving the testator’s'wife.

Defendant Samuel F. Engs alone appeals from this provision of the judgment. As will be seen from the language of the will quoted above, the testator having given his property to the trustees to hold during the lifetime of his wife, gave certain directions as to what should be done upon her death without issue. In that event he directed his executors to pay to his nephew Edward L. Snyder $40,000, or, if he should be dead, $20,000 to his widow Mississippi and $20,000 to his children,' and in case both Snyder and his wife were dead, the entire $40,000 to the surviving children. Next he directed them to pay to Samuel F. Engs $10,000. Then follows the clause “ To pay to each of my sisters the sum of one thousand dollars.” All of the testator’s sisters died after him and before the death of his wife. After his death she remarried. He was sixty-seven years of age when he died in 1888. He married his second wife, referred to in the will, [73]*73in 1881. The court below found she was “ many years his junior,” it is said thirty years younger than the testator; she survived him twenty-seven years.

Counsel for the children and personal representatives of the three sisters argues that as the wife was so much younger than testator’s sisters^ who he says must have been about his age, the bequest to them would have been meaningless if it was to be contingent upon their surviving the wife, and so would have been a frivolous and illusory provision. He urges that the testator must have known that in all human probability the sisters would not be alive at the death of the wife, and still this provision is found in the final residuary distribution after his wife’s death. If then made, counsel argues it had to be made to the children or representatives of the sisters.

Counsel for the appellant Engs insists, on the contrary, that the primary scheme of the will was a devise to trustees to hold for the life of the wife and then pay over to his issue, and that none of the individuals whom he describes as secondary or substitutionary beneficiaries,” including the sisters, had any right in the estate until the death of the wife. He says it was upon her death that the right became vested, and that there is no word of gift in connection with any secondary legacy. But as to this last argument, the same might be said of the legacies of $50,000 to the wife, and $4,000 to the Hursts payable immediately on the testator’s death. These last legatees received their legacies by a direction to the trustees to pay them exactly as in the case of the sisters. It would not be claimed that these legacies did not vest because of absence of words of gift or grant.

While there is some force in the argument of the appellant Engs against the interpretation of this clause in the will by the learned trial justice, and the plaintiff who has been denied all interest in the estate by the judgment insists that by the same rule of interpretation she is entitled to her husband’s share as devisee under his will, we think the intention of the testator with regard to this payment to his sisters may be ascertained by considering his disposition of his residuary estate as a whole. And we find that on the death of the widow without issue, the testator provided for the distribution [74]*74of the residue of the estate to two groups. The first group, (a) Samuel F. Engs $10,000; (b) Edward L. Snyder or his children in the event of his death $40,000; (c) each of the testator’s sisters $1,000.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
182 A.D. 65, 169 N.Y.S. 396, 1918 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 7831, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/snyder-v-snyder-nyappdiv-1918.