Court Opinion

ID: 9703338
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 23:52:38.549344+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:11:09.511231
License: Public Domain

*597Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Roberts:
My reading and study of decedent’s will and our past decisions1 preclude me from joining the majority. In my view, the majority have incorrectly construed testator’s gift of residuary principal.
Although almost three-quarters of a century span the years between decedent’s will and its present construction, his intention, as expressed in his will and reflected by the circumstances surrounding his. armchair, must prevail.
All must agree that the best evidence of decedent’s intention is his language. “And, while the words employed in a will necessarily constitute the gauge of the testator’s intent (Ludwick’s Estate, 269 Pa. 365, 371, 112 A. 543), a construction that would lead to a highly improbable result is to be avoided, if at all possible; and a meaning conformable to the testator’s plausible intent should be ascribed to his words if agreeable to reason: Riegel v. Oliver, 352 Pa. 244, 247, 42 A. 2d 602.” Fahey Estate, 360 Pa. 497, 500, 61 A. 2d 880 (1948).
In seeking to ascertain the intention and meaning of decedent’s language, this Court has said.: “The prop-' er course of procedure for the interpreter of a testamentary writing is not to apply rules of construction until all reasonable effort to deduce a meaning from the writing itself has been exhausted with no understandable and sensible result.” Buzby Estate, 386 Pa. 1, 8, 123 A. 2d 723 (1956).
In reality, this controversy is governed by that portion of decedent’s will which provides: “On .the death of my last surviving child I direct that the whole of the principal of the trust estate shall be distributed in *598equal portions to and among my grand-children, the children of any deceased grand-child taking deceased parents share.”
This language, testator’s meaning and his intention are clear. I agree with.the majority that canons of construction should be resorted to only if the language of the will is ambiguous or testator’s intent is uncertain. Lewis Estate, 407 Pa. 518, 180 A. 2d 919 (1962,) Yet the majority’s conclusion appears to be'based up-' on (rather than supported by) rules of construction despite the clarity of. testator’s words and intention.
Furthermore, proper construction of this gift does not require the application of the presumption that an interest is vested rather than contingent. Basically, this presumption, even though' a very ancient one, is: itself merely a rule of construction. To counterbalance the- absoluteness of the presumption of vesting, the:“pay-and divide rule” was developed over many years;; With,the proper, abolition of the “pay and divide -rule”. by-Mr; Justice, now Chief Justice Bell, speaking for a unanimous Court, in Dickson Estate, 396 Pa. 371, 152 A. 2d 680 (1959), this counter-balancing effect was destroyed; Thus, wé must now avoid routine use of the' presumption of vesting as an absolute rule but-must, apply it as it was originally intended, as a help-, ful rule of construction. Application of the.presump-.tion here requires the re-opening of estates long closed, with all the attending legal and practical, difficulties; I fear this presumption may have unduly influenced the' majority in its determination, thereby achieving, the “highly improbable result” to be avoided under Fahey Estate, supra.
As the testator in his armchair contemplated the future and reflected upon the objects of his bounty, particularly the members of his immediate family, he' was" keenly aware from tragic personal experience that children may and unfortunately do predecease their *599parents. In his lifetime, he and his wife endured three such unfortunate losses.2 While lie, undoubtedly, hoped and prayed that his children, as parents, would .be spared such tragedies, he could not and did not ignore the teachings of his own experience.
In view of testator’s personal experiences, it is difficult and almost impossible to conclude that his gift to “my grand-children, • the children of any deceased grand-child taking' deceased parents share” is an, expression of intention that his estate eventually pass to deceased grandchildren. I can find no indication anywhere in his will or in the relevant attending circumstances to suggest that this alert, well-informed and well-advised testator, who created trusts for many years in the future for many persons, and whose obvious and primary purpose was to benefit his descendants, intended to or did direct that the ultimate distribution of trust principal devolve through short-term, intermittent estates of deceased grandchildren. This is precisely what testator sought to avoid. His constant reference throughout his will to living persons announced and repeated that he was thinking, writing and providing for living persons only.
If, as the majority concludes, testator’s gift was to grandchildren without reference to survival at the, time of distribution . and irrespective of whether deceased grandchildren were survived by children, he could have achieved that gift by ending with the phrase “in equal portions to and among my grand-children.” However, by adding “the children of any deceased grand-child taking deceased parents share,” he sought to, and did, make clear that his gifts were to living persons and not to deceased grandchildren who left no children. In the case of a deceased grandchild who left children, he *600specifically provided a gift for such children. However, as to other deceased grandchildren — those leaving ho children — the will is entirely silent. If, as the majority holds, testator intended them as beneficiaries also, is it likely that he would have said nothing about •them? It is more likely that deceased grandchildren dying without children are not mentioned because testator did not intend them to benefit if they predeceased his last surviving child. Similarly, testator would not have awarded to such deceased grandchildren the same freedom to pass (by will or intestacy) the trust property as he granted to living grandchildren, a privilege not granted to deceased grandchildren leaving issue.
It seems clear to me that testator intended and his will provided that at the death of his last child, the principal should be distributed equally to his then living grandchildren, and if there were deceased grandchildren who left children, they (great-grandchildren) would take the share their parents would have taken.
In providing only for living grandchildren and the living children of deceased grandchildren, testator was carrying out his considered scheme of distribution and avoiding the incidents and consequences of almost immediate successive devolutions through estates of deceased persons. “The exclusion of estates of deceased persons is the ordinary intention of a testator.”3
*601The majority reaches its conclusion with three expressed regrets: “. . .' (a) it gives a share of the'principal to descendants long dead, and (b) it would permit strangers to testator’s blood (a deceased grandchild’s'spouse, or his legatees, or his heirs under the intestate laws) to receive a substantial portion of his estate-without any express gift, and (c) it greatly depletes, by colossal unforeseeable taxation, the property which the testator desired and intended to go to his descendants.”
In my view, the first two majority regrets (a and b) are more than expressions of regret. I deem each to be a very persuasive factor in revealing testator’s intention. Together they very strongly support the'com elusion that testator created contingent and not vested gifts for his grandchildren. Each justifies and certainly both require a result contrary to that reached by the majority.
I regard the majority’s tax regret as simply a regret, since it deals with tax circumstances and consequences unknown to this nineteenth century testator. However, in lieu of the majority’s tax regret, it is sug: gested that the pyramiding of estate administration costs and expenses and the resulting diminution of assets occasioned by early and almost immediate succes*602sive. administrations constitute a proper indication of testator’s intention. . These circumstances lend added support to the conclusion that testator’s gifts of .prim cipal were to living grandchildren.
I-dissent and would .direct that the. trust corpus:be .divided into nine equal shares. .
Mr. Justice Musmanno joins in this dissenting opinion.

 Keeping in mind, of course, that no will or testamentary trust has an exact twin or even a reasonably identical relative. This is due in part to the special and individual circumstances surrounding a testator.

 Daughters Cornelia Bonnell Houston and Eleanor Anne Houston died in 1857 and 1875, respectively. Henry H. Houston, Jr., died in 1879.

 McCrea Estate, 78 Pa. D. & C. 145, 151 (O.C. Philadelphia County, 1951). President Judge Sinkler continued: “This is recognized in Laughlin’s Estate, 836 Pa. 529, in which the court, referring to the Act of June 29, 1923, P. L. 914, which provides that in a gift to heirs following a life estate, the heirs shall be determined as of the termination of the life estate, stated (336 Pa. at 536) :
“ ‘. . . this Act does not apply to the interpretation of the will now in controversy, whose maker died in 1919, but it is here referred to as a legislative establishment of a statutory presumption, and it is reasonable to believe that this presumption is “a conclu*601sion firmly based upon the generally known results of wide human experience”.’ ” McCrea Estate, supra, at 151-52.
Although the Act of 1923, or the provisions of the Wills Act of 1947, April 24, P. L. 89, §14(4), 20 P.S. §180.14(4), and the Estates Act of 1947, April 24, P. L. 100, §14(1), 20 P.S. §301.14(1), which perpetuate this provision of the 1923 Act, do not apply to the present ease, they show the legislative approach to the same basic situation, a trust with remainder upon its termination to heirs, relatives, etc. This legislative mandate provides the same recognition of human experience that is appropriate to the present case, namely, that the devolution of a decedent’s assets through intermittent estates, where decedent’s primary object is to benefit his descendants, is an anathema.