Court Opinion

ID: 9760114
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:40:36.744658+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:08.353312
License: Public Domain

MONTGOMERY, Judge.
I respectfully dissent because I feel that the principles of Copeland v. State Bank & Trust Co., 300 Ky. 432, 188 S.W.2d 1017, should govern this case.
*495It is evident from the language of the will that the testator did not contemplate or intend that an adopted child of his child should ever share in his estate. The separate devises to his married daughters contain the language “for her life remainder to her children and their descendants”. The devise to the then unmarried daughter contains the language “for her life remainder to her children if any and their descendants”. The insertion of the phrase ■“if any” in the latter devise and its omission in the other three devises are significant. It is indicative of the intent and purpose of the testator that only a child produced by reason of the marriage of his daughter should be included and that adopted children were not contemplated. The use and omission of the phrase evince an intention of the testator that marriage and its natural products, that is, natural children as opposed to adopted children, should benefit from his estate.
This intent is further evident in the succeeding paragraph in which their is a gift over in the event any daughter should die without children. The intent to deny any stranger to his blood a share in his estate is again shown in this paragraph when he specifically provided that no husband of his daughter should take “any estate by the courtesy or as survivor” and provided that the estate devised to the daughter should be her separate estate. Had the testator been able in 1896 to have imagined or envisioned the extent to which the adoption laws would become perverted and the unfortunate result obtained in Bedinger v. Graybill’s Ex’r., Ky., 302 S.W.2d 594, in 1957, he, undoubtedly, would have guarded against any such possibility. Had the testator been endowed with the vision of Elijah and the wisdom of Solomon, he still could not have foreseen that a stranger to his blood would share a major portion in his estate. I, therefore, conclude that the judgment of the Chancellor is correct.
CAMMACK and SIMS, JJ., join in this dissent.