Court Opinion

ID: 9762107
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:10:43.535312+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:30.155638
License: Public Domain

*499Dissenting Opinion by
Me. Chief Justice Hoeace Steen :
In this crudely written holographic will the “pivotal” word is, in my opinion, incorrectly read by the majority as “stieial”; there is, of course, no such word and the testator certainly did not intend to write a meaningless one. The word is “special,”* and, so interpreted, the entire will immediately takes on form, sense and meaning. The testator evidently held his nephew Donald Swope in high esteem. He did not make either of his sons Executor; he made Donald Executor, and further showed his regard for him by saying that he would like him, not either of the sons, to take charge of the “furnial” [funeral]. What more natural, then, than a “special” bequest to him of $5,-000? To hold that that bequest was intended for the sons, followed immediately, as it was, by a bequest of the entire balance of the estate to them, involves a patent absurdity. The testator was illiterate, but I do not think that that justifies the construing of his will in a manner so obviously foreign to his intention.
I therefore dissent.
Mr. Justice Musmanno joins in this opinion.

 The letters are not “ti” but a single letter “p”; the only omission in the word is the letter “c”, but many of the words in the will omit one or more letters.