Court Opinion

ID: 9702872
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 23:28:27.496815+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:42.494836
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mb. Justice Bok :
I dissent because I feel that the Majority has unwarrantedly construed the will and presumed the testator’s meaning: time and again it announces what was his primary intention, or purpose, or design, calling them plain or manifest or undoubted or unmistakable, as things that he undoubtedly knew or must have realized, and then it rewrites the will in order to substitute percentages for dollar marks.
Such method of construction is proper when there is ambiguity in the will, and if the words within its four corners do not dissipate uncertainty, extrinsic circumstances may be resorted to, even by parole evidence. But where there is no ambiguity, rules of construction have no place, and the testator’s intention must primarily appear from the face of the will: Battles Estate, 379 Pa. 140 (1954), 108 A. 2d 688; Beisgen Estate, 387 *530Pa. 425 (1956), 128 A. 2d 52. There is no ambiguity here.
I think it clear that this testator, who concededly was eighty-seven at his death and not only had practised law in Philadelphia for sixty-seven years but was a specialist in probate work, left a clear and unambiguous will. There is nothing uncertain about a direction to sell all personal property “and after all debts, inheritance taxes and the like have been fully paid, to distribute the residue to and among the following named persons and/or corporations”, naming four persons, one twice, and twenty-three charitable corporations. There is nothing uncertain about his putting a definite bequest in dollars after each name, plus the legend: “free of all taxes, and absolutely.”
In the only remaining item the testator told his executors to sell his one piece of real estate, which was worth about $6,000, and “to distribute the proceeds to and among the legatees as hereinebefore [sic] named”, and this must mean in equal shares to those specific legatees (not residuary legatees) named in Item 1.
This was the whole will. Looked at flat as a plate, it needs no construction or inferential interpretation. With a will that leaves part undisposed of, the law is that the remnant is an intestacy and passes to the next of kin under the Intestate Act of April 24, 1947, P.L. 80, 20 P.S. §1.1 et seq.
Why should we speculate, as the Majority does, that the testator meant something else when this is what he did, or why he left out the cousin whom he had not seen for years? The Majority says that “the testator’s . . . intent to exclude that cousin . . . could hardly be more evident.” I see nothing evident about it: there may be a handful of reasons to explain the cousin’s absence. Why should we guess at intention when the will, as a fact, is clear and no word within it needs *531interpretation? The testator did what he did, and we must judge the paper fact exactly as it lies.
The clearest tell-tale that the will has no residue is the legend that each bequest shall be free of tax. A lawyer expert in probate law must know that taxes are to be paid out of something, and that the residue. The twenty-eight specific legatees are effectively separated by the legend from any residuary provision; the tax is passed along to someone not named as residuary legatee, and the specific bequests are not to be reduced by their proportionate shares of what has already been paid in taxes. They are as separate from the residue as if they had appeared in an item by themselves. The testator has made twenty-eight specific bequests and no residual disposition whatever beyond a direction to pay the tax. Had he added one name to take all that was left and added the same legend, all twenty-nine legatees would have had to share the tax; in such case the tax-free legend would mean nothing. Had he added one name without the tax-free legend, that person would have born the entire tax and taken the entire balance. Had Item 1 contained only two names, each to receive $100, it is unthinkable that they would take the whole residue of about $800,000.
Why speculate and interpret such a situation? The law has created its own compromise of myriad shadings of such facts by making the undisposed of remnant an intestacy. After all, the testator let his will sit and even republished it to include a new executor.
The Majority gives weight to the words “to and among” as indicating the recognition of a named group. But it cites no authority for any artful meaning of the words. Actually, they aren’t relevant and don’t affect the case, since there is no effective residue to which the words can apply, and the phrase in question therefore applies to nothing. The testator had not begun to make his actual residual dispositions. Why is it odd *532or forced that he should list everyone he could think of as a special donee and he satisfied that the rest, minus the tax, should go to his kin? It may be asked why he included two of his three cousins among the twenty-eight legatees, and the answer is of course that no one knows, but that it is as convenient to assume that the testator put them there until he had completed his thought as it is to assume that he wanted them to share but the third cousin not.
There is a point beyond which, to achieve what only seems to be a good result, we should not stray about in the fabulous area of a mind’s intention. Nor should we correct the testator’s errors.
As for the presumption against intestacy and in favor of disposing of all that one has, it is met by the legally equal test that an heir is not to be disinherited except by clear language. Moreover, a presumption is of use only when there is need for it. It fills a gap, as Nature does a vacuum. This testator may well have intended to leave twenty-eight specific bequests and let the intestate law dispose of the rest. This is an obvious testamentary scheme for an expert lawyer and comes nearer to being his obvious intention, since nothing need be done by way of interpretation to reach it, than does another solution that requires artificial rules.
Mr. Justice Bell joins in this dissent.