Court Opinion

ID: 9809838
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 21:29:32.781862+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:35:23.595378
License: Public Domain

Clark, J.,
dissenting: By the 13th paragraph of the will, the testator provides that all his ‘ ‘notes, bonds, stock and money in hand” should be divided between his wife and four children named. Now, if the testator had possessed both kinds of stock, investment stocks and live stock, by the settled rules of construction the “stock” would be taken from the context to be investment stock. But this is a mere rule of construction, to aid in the ascertainment of the testator’s intent and does not apply in a case like this. Here it is alleged in the complaint and admitted that the testator had not a dollar of investment stock but had a large quantity of live stock. *127In arriving at his intent it is just and natural to conclude that he intended to divide the kind of stock he had and not that kind which he did not have. Clarle v. Atkins, 90 N. C., 629 and cases there cited. Furthermore, in order to arrive at the intent of the testator, which is the sole object, it is proper to consider the condition of the testator’s family and estate, and the kind and extent of property he owned at the time of making the will. Lassiter v. Wood, 63 N. C., 360; Edens v. Williams, 7 N C., 27. It is therefore corroboration of this view that the testator had given the bulk of his large landed estate to his wife and the same four children who are named in clause 13, and that his live stock was necessary to the working and stocking of said farms, while, if the word ‘ ‘stock” in said 13th clause is held meaningless', the live stock would be thrown into the residuary clause (14th paragraph) by which it is to be sold, and (after some small legacies) the proceeds are. to be divided (clause 15) among three only of those children who are named in the 13th clause, thus leaving out, without any imaginable cause, the wife and the other child who, with these three, had participated in the nearly equal division of his realty and of the notes, bonds and money. These tyro would thus be called on to buy live stock to furnish and work the farms devised to them, while the other three children, instead of getting the corresponding one fifth of the live stock to work their one fifth of the realty, get more than enough, i. e. one third. This result would also seem to indicate that by the word “stock,” in clause 13, the testator meant to divide such stock as he had — live stock — among the five between whom he shared the bulk of his realty. The fact that, in clause 3, he had given his wife a small quantity of personal property with “two horses and two *128cows to be selected by her,” does not militate against this view. That clause, construed in connection with clause 13, is more like the allotment of a year’s provisions to the wife in addition to her child’s part of the personal property. On this point, I concur with the Judge below.