Case ID: njl_1/html/0223-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Per Cur.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

PENNINGTON AND OTHERS v. OGDEN AND OTHERS.
    A tenant in tail dies, leaving one son and two daughters by his second wife, and four daughters by his first; the son enters, and dies seized without issue. Held — that all the sisters, both of the half and the whole blood, take as co-heirs.
    This cause had been tried at the Essex Circuit, and a case stated for the opinion of the court, which was as follows :
    Sarah Sandford, tenant in fee of the premises in question, devised them, in 1703, to her son William, for life, and after his death to his son William and the heirs of his body forever. William entered and died seized in 1733. William the second also entered, after the death of his father, and died seized of the lands in the year 1750, leaving issue by his first [193] wife, Mary Pennington, Sarah, Elizabeth and Frances, the present plaintiffs; and by his second, Rachel Ogden, Catharine Carter, the present defendants, and a son William, who, after the death of his father, entered and died seized, without leaving issue. The question submitted to the court was, whether the sisters, by the whole blood of the person last seized, took to the exclusion of the sisters of the half blood.
   Per Cur.

The sisters of the half blood are entitled to their proportionate share of the land, as co-heirs of the body of William the second. The possession or seizin of the last tenant in tail cannot entitle his sisters of the whole blood to the whole property. The rule which has been cited as governing this ease is inapplicable; it applies only in cases of fee simple, where the sisters claim as heirs of the person last seized. In this case the sisters of the whole blood cannot claim performam doni as heirs of their brother, but as heirs of their father, which character is equally applicable to all, and therefore all take equally as co-heirs.