Court Opinion

ID: 9692310
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 15:51:07.584792+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:34.006129
License: Public Domain

*280Hallows, J.
(dissenting). Estate of Lefebvre (1898), 100 Wis. 192, 75 N. W. 971, was .erroneously decided. This much is admitted by the majority opinion when it states the Lefebvre opinion was partly grounded upon the testator’s intention not to die intestate, that the opinion has given judicial gloss to sec. 2278, R. S. 1878 (now sec. 238.02 (1), Stats.) and the present court would have difficulty in reaching such an interpretation of that section' without the fetters-of the. Lefebvre Case. Lefebvre was not partly grounded on the testator’s intention; it was entirely grounded upon what the court thought the testator’s intention was, which the majority opinion states was irrelevant. Taking that element out of Lefebvre leaves only- a ghost of the holding, no flesh, no bones, no brains.
The majority opinion states under the doctrine of equitable conversion the vendor’s land contract is deemed personalty, not real estate. This is not correct. The land contract by its very nature is personalty and the right to sue and recover the purchase price is personalty without the application of the equitable-conversion doctrine. What the doctrine does is to treat the vendor’s legal title to the land which, is subject to the land contract as personal property.
The majority opinion now rejects the whole doctrine of equitable conversion and holds that under sec. 238.02 (1), Stats., the debt follows the security — the wagon pulls the horse. The right to collect the purchase price is not an interest in land. Sec. 238.02 (1) does not require the legal title to the land held for security to carry with it the right to the purchase price. The legal title passes under the will and the statute, but the land contract does not. Under sec. 316.54 the heirs or devisees, or executor or administrator, may be required by the county court to convey the real estate which the deceased ought to have conveyed, if living, in compliance with the terms of the land contract.
*281The majority opinion hangs on the single silken thread that this court once descriptively characterized an interpretation of a statute as becoming a part of the statute. The majority takes this statement too seriously. The power of the supreme court to overrule a decision which it believes to be erroneous, is not, in my opinion, restricted to decisions dealing only with judge-made law but also extends to judge-made interpretations of statutes. Although Lejebvre has been on the books for sixty-five years, it has not once been cited as an authority by this court until now.
The plaintiff is correct in his argument the legislature never intended sec. 238.02 (1), Stats., to apply to the question of ademption. Taking the Lefebvre decision as written and unmodified by the majority opinion, it can be distinguished from the instant facts. Here, the testator’s intention was to give to his son a residuary estate, whatever that might be. At the time of the testator’s death he had only the bare legal title to the farm. He had sold it. If the testator intended his son to have a life estate in the farm and his grandchildren the remainder, why did he sell the property? Whether the modern theory of ademption is based on intention or not, there is no farm of which to give the son the life estate and the grandchildren the remainder. The result of the majority opinion is to create a trust of a chose in action to be gradually converted into money, if the land contract is unbreached by the vendee, giving the use of the principal to the son and upon his death the principal to the grandchildren.
The decision will create more problems in the administration of wills than it will solve. To obviate such difficulties, sec. 312.01 (4), Stats., was created in 1959. This section cannot be disregarded and ignored by stating it is a mere codification of the doctrine of equitable conversion. Sec. 312.01 (4) requires a land contract and the interest in real estate to be set forth in the inventory of the decedent’s estate as personal property if the decedent is the vendor and as real *282property if the decedent is the vendee. But more than this, the section requires the land contract and the interest in the real estate to be treated as personal property of the decedent-vendor and as real property of the decedent-vendee. This section being specific takes precedence over the general provisions of sec. 238.02 (1) and must be given effect. The effect is to overrule the holding of the Lefebvre Case. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.