Court Opinion

ID: 9765176
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:54:35.892986+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:54:01.905905
License: Public Domain

Jacobs, J.
(dissenting). In this field the judicial responsibility is well defined. It is to seek and carry out the testator’s lawful purpose though it may currently appear to the court to have been utterly misguided. This testator was obsessed with his own blood line and he in all likelihood intended to confine his bounty strictly to those who followed in that line. That much appears most pointedly when the terms of his will are viewed in the light of his published book entitled Our American Ancestry and the testimony of Dr. Bowers who on numerous occasions discussed its subject with him.
The testator dedicated his book to his “sons and daughters and their descendants.” In it he refers to “the strains of blood which converge in me and in your mother”, to “all the American vehicles of my blood” and to the early settlers who “had little of value but their blood” and whose blood “with its inevitable share of human frailties was a richer legacy than titles, wealth or culture could have given.” And throughout there were repeated references to the “blood of my father”, to “our family blood”, to the family indebted*419ness for “our blood”, to the fact that “we, their proud descendants, know and care about their forebears” and to the “temperaments and traits of character” transmitted through the blood line.
Dr. Bowers testified that the testator was well educated and was very “authentic in his use of words”. When he used the word “descendant” he “undoubtedly meant the same as the genealogy term ‘issue’ ”, i. e., “the natural born children and none other”. He meant “the biological, natural offspring of his children”. According to Dr. Bowers there was little public or private discussion of adoptions in the testator’s era (1853-1929) and there were then none in his family line. Adoption “would have been anathema” to the testator and he “would have been quite outraged by the statement that adopted children were equal to natural children in the genetical sense or in the genealogical sense.” Dr. Bowers expressed the opinion that the testator’s strong feeling with respect to his blood line would carry forward to the distribution of property and that he would “confine it to his blood children”. Apparently to this particular testator along with many others of his generation, that would be the natural thing to do.
Although the will was drawn by a well known and highly competent law firm, there is no doubt that the testator had an extensive hand in its terminology. Words and phrases such as “descendants”, “descendants per stirpes” and “descendants of mine” appear at least 40 times in a compact will. The word “issue”, used interchangeably with “descendant”, appears on four occasions. The words my “sons and daughters” and their “descendants” appear repeatedly but the words “children” and “grandchildren” do not appear at all. The crucial clause provides that upon the death of each surviving son or daughter, his or her share shall be transferred to that son’s or daughter’s “descendants in ratable shares, per stirpes”. In the light of his education and interests, there is no reason to suspect that the testator was not fully aware of the common dictionary meaning of “per *420stirpes” as well as “descendants”. See In re Piston’s Estate, 53 N. J. Super. 139, 149 (App. Div. 1958), affirmed 30 N. J. 589 (1959): “'[P]er stirpes,’ even when considered as referring solely to a mode of description, by its very meaning carries with it the idea of blood descendants.” See also Connecticut Bank and Trust Company, Trustee v. Hills, Conn., (December Term 1968): “The words ‘descendant’ or ‘issue’ in their ordinary and primary meaning connote lineal relationship by blood, and they will be so construed unless it clearly appears that they were used in a more extended sense.”
Apart from the lay views of the testator himself, it may confidently be assumed that the legal views of the law firm were along the same vein. As was recently pointed out in my separate opinion in In re Thompson’s Will, 53 N. J. 276 (1969), words such as “issue” and “descendant” used by a stranger to the adoption carried with them, when this will was written, the clear judicial presumption of natural offspring to the exclusion of adopted children. It may fairly be inferred that the law firm was aware of this presumption. With hindsight it would have dealt with the subject with greater specificity although that thought does not advance us for it may equally be expressed in all construction cases affecting all types of instruments. The judicial responsibility remains to seek and carry out the testator’s intent and here, as elsewhere in our law, the probabilities will suffice. See Fidelity Union Trust Co. v. Robert, 36 N. J. 561, 564 (1962). Since the record leaves little room to doubt that the Chancery Division’s construction failed to fulfill this particular testator’s views and wishes, which of course have no relation to mine, I vote to reverse.