Case Name: Owen v. Cogbill et al.
Court: Superior Court of Chancery of Virginia
Jurisdiction: Virginia
Decision Date: 1810-02
Citations: 4 Hen. & M. 487
Docket Number: 
Parties: Owen v. Cogbill et al.
Judges: 
Reporter: Virginia Reports
Volume: 14
Pages: 959–959

Head Matter:
Owen v. Cogbill et al.
February Term. 1810.
Statuste of Descents — Consfi-uction.— Construction of tie act of descents, as to the mother's inheriting the 'estate from an infant child, on whom it descended from the great uncle of the infant.
John Cogbill died intestate, seised of lands in fee-simple. Before his death, one of his nephews, Thomas W. Cogbill, died intestate, and left Sally Wilson Cogbill, his only child, an infant of very tender years, who survived the first intestate, and died, leaving her mother and an aunt, the only sister of her father; there being no grandfather or grandmother on the father’s side of the infant, nor uncles nor their descendants; and the only question was, between the aunt and the mother of the infant, whether the former should take the whole, or a moiety.

Opinion:
By the Chancellor.
The act of Assembly of 1785 totally abolished the common law, as to the course of descents, and established a new system. But this act there was not, perhaps, *a single case unprovided for. The fifth and sixth sections of the act of 1792, were taken from the act of 1790, and from the only exceptions to the general rules prescribed by the act of 1785; and which show the correct construction of these acts to be this, that that which does not come within the exceptions, must be governed by the general provisions of the act as they stood in the act of 1785; and, therefore, as the infant in this case did not derive her title from her father, but from her great uncle, it is not a case within the fifth section of the act of 1792, and must be decided according to the general provisions thereof, which gives to the mother of an infant that to which the infant was entitled, which in this case was one moiety of the share allotted to the aunt.