Case Name: MICHAEL F. CUSACK, Appellant, v. OLIVER B. TWEEDY, Individually and as Sole Surviving Executor of the Last Will and Testament of JOSEPH N. LORD, Deceased, Respondent
Court: New York Supreme Court, General Term
Jurisdiction: New York
Decision Date: 1890-05
Citations: 63 N.Y. Sup. Ct. 617
Docket Number: 
Parties: MICHAEL F. CUSACK, Appellant, v. OLIVER B. TWEEDY, Individually and as Sole Surviving Executor of the Last Will and Testament of JOSEPH N. LORD, Deceased, Respondent.
Judges: Bartlett, J., concurred.
Reporter: Supreme Court Reports (Hun)
Volume: 63
Pages: 617–625

Head Matter:
MICHAEL F. CUSACK, Appellant, v. OLIVER B. TWEEDY, Individually and as Sole Surviving Executor of the Last Will and Testament of JOSEPH N. LORD, Deceased, Respondent.
Power of sale — when it survives the duration of the trust estate eren,ted by the will.
A testator, by the eighth clause of his will, devised all his residuary estate as follows:
One-fourth part thereof to his executors, in trust, to rent and invest, and to collect and receive the rents, issues and profits thereof, and to apply the same to the use of his daughter, Maria Tweedy, for and during her natural life, and upon her death to convey and pay the said fourth part, with any unapplied rents and income thereof, unto and among such of the lawful issue of his daughter as might then be living, the issue of any deceased child of his said daughter to take the share to which the parent would have been entitled if living. The testator, in the same clause, devised the remaining three-fourths of the residuary estate in like manner in trust, one for the benefit of each of the three other daughters of the testator.
By the ninth clause of his will the testator provided as follows:
“Ninth. I hereby authorize and empower my said executors, and the survivors and survivor of them, and such, and whichever of them as shall act at their or his discretion from time to time, and at any time or times to sell and dispose of the whole or any part or parts, of my estate, both real and personal, at public auction or private sale, * * and in the meantime my said executors, and the survivors and survivor and such, and whichever as shall act, are and is hereby authorized to collect and receive the rents of the whole and every part of my real estate.”
Maria Tweedy named in the will subsequently died leaving issue.
Held, that the power of sale given to the executors survived the death of the said Maria Tweedy and operated upon the totality of the residue, and not merely upon each of the undivided portions of the estate; and was not extinguished, upon the falling in of one of the trusts, as to the quarter interest represented thereby.
That the provision following the power of sale that, “ in the meantime, my said executors” are “ authorized to collect and receive the rents of the whole and every part of my real estate,” was not repugnant to the authority of the. executors to exercise the power of sale after the termination of the life estate of one of the daughters, as this provision might well apply to a period during which the executor and the issue of the deceased daughter held the title as tenants in common. (Van Brunt, P. X, dubitans.)
Appeal by the plaintiff Michael E. Cusack from a judgment, entered in the office of the clerk of the county of New York on the 19th day of July, 1889, dismissing the plaintiff’s complaint.
The complaint alleged that, on the 1st day of February, 1888, the plaintiff centered into an agreement, in writing, with the defendant, as sole surviving executor of the last will and testament of Joseph N. Lord, whereby the defendant agreed to sell to the plaintiff certain premises in the city of New York upon- certain terms in the complaint mentioned; that the defendant was unable to convey a good title to the premises; that, on the contrary, the premises were subject to various incumbrances, and in particular to an equal undivided one-third interest, or estate in fee simple, vested in the lieirsat-law of one Maria Burnham, deceased, and to the objection that the plaintiff had no right, power or authority, as executor, to convey the' one equal fourth part or interest in the said ¡premises, which, upon the death of Maria Tweedy, one of the cestuis que trust named in the will, vested in possession in her lawful issue then surviving, and the issue of any who were then dead.
Judgment was asked for the return of $1,000 stated to have been paid by the plaintiff to defendant, in pursuance of said agreement, and for certain sums expended for legal services in the examination of the title and for necessary disbursements.
Russell Benedict, for the appellant.
George G. Be Witt, Jr., for the respondent.

Opinion:
Barrett, J.:
I concur with the presiding justice in regard to the alleged deed of September 9, 1815. But I am unable to concur as to the power of sale. My views upon the latter head are these : Immediately upon the death of Maria Tweedy her children undoubtedly took the corpus of the trust estate, namely, the one equal fourth part of the original residue devised and bequeathed by Joseph N. Lord to his executors in trust for the benefit of this daughter, Maria.
They so took, however, subject to, and not freed from, the general power in trust specified in the ninth clause of Mr. Lord's will. There is no expression anywhere in this will suggestive of an actual partition of the residue for the trust purposes, or of any division, save in the legal sense essential to the validity of the trust. Indeed, the testator's plan seems to be directly opposed to any such preliminary partition, or to the separation and setting apart in specie of the corpus of each of the four trust estates. This is the opening language of the eighth clause: "All the rest, residue and remainder of my estate, both real and personal, I dispose as follows, that is to say: " Then follow the four trusts, each of one equal fourth part thereof. Not a word here about conversion and actual separation of the product into four parts; on the contrary, in the next clause (the ninth), we find a provision authorizing the executors to permit any part of the estate invested at the time of the testator's death to remain and continue in the same state of investment for any of the purposes of the will so long as such executors approve ; a most unlikely provision if an early conversion for the purpose of a practical division or to facilitate partition were contemplated. This ninth clause in no wise limits the power of sale to the respective trust estates. It is broad, general and comprehensive, authorizing the executors, at their discretion, from t/ime to time or at any time or times, to sell and dispose of the whole or any part or parts of the testator's estate, both real and personal. Thus the power plainly operates throughout upon the xmdivided residue for which the respective trust estates are to be practically worked out. In other words, the power is general and unlimited, operating upon the totality of the residue, and not merely upon each of the undivided trust estates. And thus it serves a purpose useful and beneficial to the testator's estate, for it enables the parties in interest to avoid many of the difficulties of conveyance attendant upon tenancies in common, especially where some of the tenants are infants. If, therefore, the power is general, operating upon the entire residue as such, there is no good reason why it should cease, upon the falling in of one of the trusts, as to the still 'imseparated one equal quarter immediately vested in the children of Maria Tweedy. The falling-in of that trust at once necessitates a division of the estate, so that the children of Maria Tweedy may receive their one equal quarter freed from the remaining trusts; and it was doubtless largely to facilitate this very division and distribution, and to save the beneficiaries the expense of partition proceedings, that the testator gave his executors this continuous and unlimited general power. Mai-ia Tweedy had eight children living at the time of her death. They were then of age, it is true, but several of them must have been minors at the date of the execution of Mr. Lord's will, for JVIrs. Tweedy was married in 1832 or 1833, while Mr. Lord died in 1857, leaving this will, dated March 27, 1856 ; and her husband, the present defendant, testified upon the trial that all the property has been sold by him (as sole surviving executor) since his wife's death, " the last of it at auction a short time ago to olose up the estate."
Upon all these facts the case on this head comes within the principles enunciated in Crittenden v. Fairchild (41 N. Y., 289); Kinnier v. Rogers (42 id., 531) and Skinner v. Quin (43 id., 99); and it is not affected by the rule laid down in Bruner v. Meigs (64 id., 506), and other cases which have been cited of a similar character, for the reason that there the power, as said by Allen, J., was, "in terms, restricted and limited, in point of time, to the continuance of the respective trusts." This was further emphasized as follows: " It is a several power in respect to the property held under the respective trusts, and not a general power embracing the whole estate, and to be exercised so long as any one of the trusts continues, or until a final partition of the estate is made."
One word more. I am unable to perceive the force of the suggestion that the present power ceased the moment this trust estate vested in the children of Maria Tweedy, because of the provision in the ninth clause that " in the meantime," that is, until the exercise of the general power immediately preceding, the executors are to collect and receive the entire rents of the estate. The argument is that the executors cannot receive the rents of the one equal quarter in question, because, upon the vesting thereof in the children of Maria, they alone could collect such rents. This reasoning overlooks the fact that in the preceding eighth clause there is a general power given to the executors to collect and receive the rents, income, etc., of each equal fourth part of the general residue. So that this subsequent power in the same direction must be treated as additional, and not as mere surplusage. If additional, it plainly contemplated a contingency like the present, where what formed part of the undivided and unconverted residue has become vested in the children of Maria Tweedy and this executor as tenants in common. Now, as these children, pending partition (or distribution through the simpler process of an execution of the power), cannot well collect from the tenant one-quarter of the rent, and this executor three-quarters; and as some rent must necessarily accrue between Maria Tweedy's death and actual division or distribution, authority is thus given to the executor to colled^ " in the meantime," the whole of this undivided, and, so far as the tenant is concered, indivisible rent. The word "meantime" thus refers to the execution of the power, and to its execution in just such a manner as the present, while the additional authority conferred upon the executor cannot, under such circumstances, be void, for it isreally nothing more than he would have had without it, as tenant in common with the children of Mrs. Tweedy.
While, therefore, entirely agreeing that the defendant must be able to give the plaintiff a marketable title, I am convinced that it would frustrate the clear purpose of the testator to hold that he cannot do so by the due execution of this power. In my judgment, therefore, this judgment should be affirmed, with costs,-
Bartlett, J., concurred.