Court Opinion

ID: 9688662
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 17:59:45.603378+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:40.983592
License: Public Domain

McCALEB, Justice
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I concur in the rulings of the court with respect to the attacks on the legality of the will by the first cousins of decedent and it is also clear that the testator provided for his estate to be divided into two equal portions, one-half for his mother’s side of the family and one-half for his father’s side.
However, it is my opinion that, since it is well established by eminent law writers and a unanimity of opinion in other jurisdictions that the word “cousin”, as used in a will, means first cousin, see Black’s Law Dictionary, 2d Ed., page 292; 21 C.J.S., pp. 862, 863; Page, “Treatise on Law and Wills”, 3d Ed. (1941); Thompson on “Wills”, 3d Ed. (1947) and cases cited in Annotation, 19 A.L.R. 1410 et seq., and since there are no surviving first cousins on the testator’s mother’s side of the family, that disposition lapses and the heirs at law, i.e., the first cousins on the father’s side, inherit.