Riggs v Palmer

1) In regards to the statutes that regulate the making, proofing, and the effects of wills when written, the intent with which they were made was that of making sure that the donee (or donees) named in the will were given the property promised to them. 2) To this end, and through a literal interpretation of the aforementioned statutes, one might say that if someone is named in a will, and the will can not be, and is not, modified in any way, then the person that was named must be given the property that was promised to them -- no matter what the circumstances. 3) However, it could not possibly have been the intention of the lawmakers, when creating these statutes, to allow a donee to obtain their promised property, when said donee murdered the will-maker in order to put the will into motion -- in other words, to make it operative. 4) Had such a situation been brought to their attention as they were making the governing laws of wills, they might very well have added a provision against it, specifically stating that one who murders in order to make a will operative should not gain whatever has been promised to them in said will. 5) To allow the murderer of a testator to reap the gains of a will in which they were named a donee is to allow them to benefit from a heinous crime that they committed; the "gains", in that case, would then become ill-gotten, and undeserved. 6) In the case of Riggs v. Palmer, defendant Palmer, having known about the provisions that his grandfather had included in his will that would give him the remainder of his estate after it was split up between his two daughters, willfully poisoned him, so that he might quickly and immediately reap the gains of the will in which he was named. 7) To this end, Palmer has indeed committed a heinous crime -- that of murder by poisoning his grandfather, the testator in the case -- in order to reap (ill-gotten) benefits; that of the inheritance left in his grandfather's will for him. 8) Thus, if Palmer is allowed to obtain the inheritance left for him in the will written by his grandfather, then he is essentially being rewarded for murder. 9) To reward Palmer (or anyone, for that matter) for committing an act such as murder is bad. 10) There is a construct in law called rational interpretation, which allows for the restriction and enlarging of the meaning of a statute, depending on whether or not the intention was with the lawmakers when they were writing the statute at the time. 11) The rule goes as follows: if a provision was within the intentions of the lawmakers as they were writing the statute, then it is within the statute, as if it were specifically written down; but anything that would not have been within the intentions of the lawmakers is not to be considered within the statute, even if it is "within" the letter of the law. 12) As was stated prior, it was within the intentions of the lawmakers, when creating the statues that govern over wills, to write them so as to ensure that the donees named by the testators would receive whatever property was left to them in their will, once the will was activated; however, it could not have been their intention to allow this to occur when the will was activated by willful murder. 13) To this end, by the rule of rational interpretation, the obtainment of an inheritance by a donee, in a situation where the donee knowingly and willfully murders the testator, would be unlawful -- because it was not taken into account by the lawmakers at the time. 14) In other words, they had no intention of ensuring that such a person would benefit from being named in a will; and since rational interpretation relies entirely on intent in order to include a provision within the boundaries of a statute, a provision to ensure that a murderer would benefit from murdering a testator would not be included within the statutes governing wills. 15) If we follow this rule of rational interpretation, having found through it that the lawmakers had no intention of allowing a testator's murderer to obtain what is bequeathed to them in their will, then Palmer, in the case of Riggs v. Palmer, would not obtain the inheritance left to him in his grandfather's will. 16) If Palmer were to not obtain the inheritance left to him in his grandfather's will, then justice would truly be upheld, both for the deceased, and the deceased's family -- in that he would not be profiting from a death that he, in his greed, willfully caused. 17) Thus, if we were to follow the rule of rational interpretation, justice would be upheld, both for the deceased, and the deceased's family -- because Palmer would not be allowed to profit from a death that he, in his greed, willfully caused. 18) Allowing justice for the deceased and his family is good. 19) Not allowing Palmer to profit from a death that he willfully caused, in part of his own greed, is also good. 20) The negative consequences that will stem from the decision to deny Palmer what was left to him in his will, such as the redacting and possible revision of certain parts of the will, and the potential for an argument for what appears to be "punishing a man twice" for his crimes, are acceptable in light of the circumstances that have been laid out in this case, and in light of the actions that Palmer took to activate the will in the first place. 21) Therefore, Palmer should not receive the inheritance from the will.