Case Name: Jennie Udell, Respondent, v. Henry S. Stearns and Amy D. Stearns, His Wife, Appellants
Court: New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division
Jurisdiction: New York
Decision Date: 1908-03-11
Citations: 125 A.D. 196
Docket Number: 
Parties: Jennie Udell, Respondent, v. Henry S. Stearns and Amy D. Stearns, His Wife, Appellants.
Judges: 
Reporter: Appellate Division Reports
Volume: 125
Pages: 196–202

Head Matter:
Jennie Udell, Respondent, v. Henry S. Stearns and Amy D. Stearns, His Wife, Appellants.
Second Department,
March 11, 1908.
Will — rights of after-born children — champerty and maintenance — adverse possession — pleading — defense of Statute of Limitations and adverse possession.
The fact that a testator having two children living devised all his lands to his wife but failed to change his will after the birth of other children during his lifetime does.not showman intention to leave the latter children unprovided for. Hence, by virtue of the statutes they take the same portion of the lands they would have taken had the testator died intestate, and their grantee is entitled to maintain partition.
Defendants in partition cannot claim that a conveyance to the plaintiff was void for champerty when there was no actual adverse possession by the defendants or their predecessors as required hy the Revised Statutes in order to avoid the deed.
The defense of adverse possession or the Statute of Limitations must be pleaded to be available.
Rich, J., dissented, with opinion.
Appeal by the defendants, Henry S. Stearns and another, from an interlocutory judgment of the County Court of Kings county in favor of the plaintiff, entered in the office of the clerk of said county on the 12tli day of September, 1907, upon the decision of the court, a trial by jury having been waived.
This is an action of partition of real estate.
One Wilder died possessed of the land in question in 1880, leaving a widow and four children. lie left a will which was made in 1874. It left all of his property to his widow. Two of the children were born after the will was made, but during the testator’s lifetime.
The land was unimproved and unoccupied. The widow conveyed it, and the defendants have succeeded to the title conveyed by her. The two after-born children of the testator afterwards on coming of age conveyed an undivided one-half thereof, and the plaintiff has succeeded to that title.
Hector M. Hitchings, for the appellants.
Edward J. Byrne [J. Hunter Lack with him on the brief], for the respondent.

Opinion:
Gaynor, J.:
The two after-born children succeeded as heirs, each to an undivided one-fourth of the land of the testator upon- -his death, for it was provided by the Revised Statutes that whenever a testator should have a child born after the making of his will, either during his life or after his death, such child should "succeed" to the same portion of the testator's real and personal estate as would have "descended or been distributed" to him if the testator liad died intestate; provided (as is the case here) such child were left " unprovided for by any settlement, and neither provided for nor in any way mentioned in such will " (2 R. S. p. 65, sec. 49, as amended by ch. 22, Laws of 1869; Smith v, Robertson, 89 N. Y, 555; Herriot v, Prime, 155 id. 8; Matter of Murphy, 144 id. 557; Luce v. Burchard, 78 Hnn, 537). Section 1868 of the Code of Civil Procedure also recognizes that such after-born children succeed to their share of the realty as if there had been an entire intestacy, and authorizes them to maintain an action of partition. The argument of the learned counsel for the defendants that it is permissible to spell out of the will itself, coupled with the fact that the testator did not make a new one, and the presumption that every one knows the law, an intention by him to leave his after-born children, the same as his children in being when he made his will, nothing, goes down before the words of the statute and the decisions under .it. To thus ascertain the intention of the testator,.and give force to it, would nullify the statute. It may well be that the statute should be amended so as not to apply to a will by which one spouse leaves all of his property to the other spouse, but we have to accept it as it now is.
As neither adverse possession nor the statute of limitations is pleaded as a defense, they are not to be considered, and as there was no actual possession by the defendants or their predecessors in title, the conveyances of the two 'after-born children and their grantees could not be void for champerty, for, by the terms of the statute the possession of the person claiming under a title adverse to that of the grantor must be " actual ", not merely constructive, to make such grantor's deed void (1 E. S. p. 739, sec. 147; Dawley v. Brown, 79 N. Y. 390; Saunders v. N. Y. C. & H. R. R. R. Co., 135 id. 613).
The judgment should be affirmed.
Jenks, Hooker and Miller, JJ., concurred ; Eich, J., read for reversal.