Court Opinion

ID: 9865399
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 17:05:19.531366+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:35:43.203855
License: Public Domain

Carpenter, J.,
dissenting. .. My. view of this case is, that the defendant ought to be regarded as holding under *437the will, rather than under the law as tenant by the curtesy. At common law this would, clearly be so. The life tenant, made so by law, was not impeachable for waste, unless the will made him so; the principle of the common law being that when a life estate is created by act of the parties, the life tenant is not impeachable for waste unless the instrument creating the estate prohibits the commission of waste. Otherwise in life estates created by operation of law. In-such cases the law protects the reversioner by restraining waste. A statute now restrains waste in life estates, created by will or other instrument, unless the instrument creating the estate allows it; so that all life estates are now practically upon the same footing. Assuming then that in this case the estate created by the will and the estate created by the law are identical, and that the circumstances are such as to justify the tenant in holding under the one or the other, as he may elect, ought he not to make his election ? And, in the absence of an election, would or would not the law presume, in the interest of creditors, and to effectuate a favorite principle of the law that all a man’s property should be liable for his debts, that he holds under the will ? There certainly can be little hardship in this, for he can protect himself, if need be, by rejecting the provisions of the will, and fall back upon his legal rights.
But the exigencies of this case do not call for an answer to these questions; for the legal estate and that created by the will are not identical; and the defendant has practically made his election to hold under the will. Under the will he has more than a life estate. He has a legal right to dispose of a part or even the whole of the real estate, if need be, “to secure to him a good and comfortable support.” As tenant by the curtesy he has no such right.
Moreover, by his silence and conduct he has elected to accept the legacy. He was the executor, accepted the trust, proved the will, and has settled the estate. There is no intimation in the record that he refused to accept the legacy and gave notice to creditors and others interested in the estate that he relied solely upon the estate conferred upon *438him by law. But if it were not so, the devise being favorable to him, the law presumes an acceptance until the coHv trary appears.
One word more. It is now held that he may elect to hold as a tenant by the curtesy and thereby defeat the claims of creditors. If hereafter he should find it needful in order to secure a comfortable support, to sell some part of the estate, and a controversy should arise between the reversioner and himself, is the court prepared to hold that, for the purpose of that case, he might.hold under the provisions of the will?