Court Opinion

ID: 9653265
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:42:20.013639+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:57.430304
License: Public Domain

L. HAND, Circuit Judge (dissenting in part).
As to the Kentucky land I agree because the law of that state is too well fixed for us to ■ disregard.. The law of Ohio is at least in doubt, and the only express statement of its highest court favors what seems to me the right rule. The notion of an “election” in such eases arose where dower would defeat a devise to another or a conveyance in the testator’s life; even then the devisor had to say that he meant the wife’s provision to be-conditional on a release of the dower so that his will could be executed in respect of, his other .dispositions. The statute we are considering has done nothing more I think than to supply that intent when the contrary is not clear; the question remains one of testamentary interpretation. ■
We must indeed find that the will “plainly shows” that the devise was intended to be in addition to dower; that appears to me clear. I fail to understand how a man can give his wife land which he owns without intending it to be in addition to her dower, if he knows that she has dower. To suppose anything else is to assume that he has a preference for her taking as his devisee rather than as his widow, an imputation of concern for legalistic niceties which I submit it is absurd to ascribe to most people. If he has creditors, there might be a purpose in it, b.ut that too an incredible one. We must suppose that he meant her to get whát was left of his estate if there was anything, on condition that, if there turned out to be a deficit, she should pay it up to the value of her dower. I should say that it was safe to assume that nobody would mean to do that unless he said so.
I find it hard to believe that a man will ever expressly declare in such a case that his devise is to be in addition to dower. My brothers’ construction seems to me in nearly all cases to defeat the testator’s intent, by which I mean, what he would say if the result of his language was to be presented to him. Besides, I have never understood how there can be any true “election” between taking dower and taking a fee in the same land which includes the same interest.
I dissent as to the Ohio land.