Court Opinion

ID: 9716370
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:36:13.197855+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:59:17.118082
License: Public Domain

*327Quirico, J.
(with whom Tauro, C.J., joins) concurring in the result. I concur in the court’s conclusion that the general residuary clause in the will of Isabella H. Dexter exercised the power of appointment given to her by art. Fourth of the will of Arthur Hunnewell. However, I would reach that result without regard to whether the power of appointment was, either when it was created or when it was exercised, a general power of appointment or a special power of appointment, and without perpetuating the distinction made between the two types of powers in our decision in Fiduciary Trust Co. v. First Natl. Bank, 344 Mass. 1, 6-10 (1962). I would hold that the “settled canon of construction that a general residuary clause will operate as an execution of a general testamentary power unless a contrary intent is shown by the will” (Fiduciary Trust Co. case, 5), quoting from Second Bank-State St. Trust Co. v. Yale Univ. Alumni Fund, 338 Mass. 520, 524 (1959), which has been a part of the case law of this Commonwealth at least since our decision in Amory v. Meredith, 7 Allen 397 (1863), applies equally to the execution of a special power of appointment, provided, of course, that (a) the residuary clause includes any beneficiary within the scope of the special power of appointment, (b) the instrument creating the special power does not prohibit its exercise by a general residuary clause, and (c) the residuary clause includes no disclaimer of intent to exercise the special power.
It is with reluctance that I advocate a departure from the holding in the Fiduciary Trust Co. case which was decided in 1962 by a quorum of distinguished Justices of this court, but I am persuaded to do so by the policy considerations discussed below. The Fiduciary Trust Co. case itself represented a departure from views expressed, by way of dicta, in several cases which preceded it. In Stone v. Forbes, 189 Mass. 163, 169 (1905), we said: “If it were necessary to determine the question we should hesitate to follow the . . . [distinction drawn in the *328English cases between the exercise of general and special powers by a residuary clause]. There is certainly less reason for doing so since Amory v. Meredith than before. There would seem to be no good reason why the question whether a special power of appointment had been exercised should not be determined by the same rules that are applied in other cases to the construction or interpretation of wills.” In several other cases the opportunity to rule that a general residuary clause does not ordinarily exercise a special power of appointment was also declined. Worcester Bank & Trust Co. v. Sibley, 287 Mass. 594, 598 (1934). Pitman v. Pitman, 314 Mass. 465, 475 (1943). Frye v. Loring, 330 Mass. 389, 394-395 (1953). In the last cited case we referred to Am. Law of Property, § 23.40 (a) (1952). That source provides: “The reasoning supporting the Massachusetts presumption that a residuary clause was intended to exercise powers of appointment applies with equal force whether the power in question is general or special.”
The basic judicial objective in this and similar cases is to ascertain the testamentary intent of the donee of the power. I am unable to accept the proposition that a testator who subscribes to a will which includes a residuary clause in substantially the common form, broadly covering “all the rest, residue and remainder of my property” does not thereby express quite clearly an intention to dispose of all of the property and estate which can be the subject of testamentary disposition by him. Neither am I able to accept the proposition that such language, reasonably construed, permits any inference that the testator intended, by the use of such broad language, to exercise a general power of appointment but not a special one.
In its decision in the Amory case, supra, from which there evolved the “settled canon of construction that a general residuary clause will operate as an execution of a general testamentary power unless a contrary intent is shown by the will,” this court first reviewed the develop*329ment of the law of England on this subject. It cited several English cases which had held that a will would not operate to execute a power of appointment unless it referred expressly to the power or to the subject of the power, and that “a mere residuary clause gave no sufficient indication of intention to execute a power” (399). This court then noted criticism of the English rule, particularly because of its emphasis on the distinction between “power” and “property,” stating that “the refinements and subtleties to which this distinction leads are great and perplexing” (398). It then noted that the rule was changed by a statute (St. 7 Will. IV and 1 Vict, c. 26, § 27), declaring “that a general devise of real or personal estate, in wills thereafter made, should operate as an execution of a power of the testator over the same, unless a contrary intention should appear on the will”; and then quoted the comment of Judge Story (1 Story R. 458, note), to the effect that as a result of the statute, “ [t]he doctrine, therefore, has at least settled down in that country [England] to what would seem to be the dictate of common sense, unaffected by technical niceties” (400). For further discussions and citations of cases on the development of the law on this subject in England and in this country, see Restatement: Property, § 343 (1), comment d (1940); Am. Law of Property, § 23.40 (1952); 104 Trusts and Estates 814 (1965); 51 Cornell L. Q. 1, 9-10 (1965); 16 A. L. R. 3d 911, 920-924 (1967); 62 Am. Jur. 2d, Powers, §§ 51-52 (1972).
It is apparent that in the case of Fiduciary Trust Co. v. First Natl. Bank, 344 Mass. 1 (1962), the court distinguished general powers and special powers in part on the basis of the distinction between powers and property.1 The latter is the same distinction of which *330this court said in the Amory case, supra: “ [T]he refinements and subtleties to which this distinction leads are great and perplexing” (398). Indeed, the case now before us represents one of the perplexities resulting from a rule based on such a distinction. These unnecessary “refinements and subtleties” inevitably breed litigation initiated either by competing claimants or by a fiduciary, often a professional fiduciary, seeking to avoid or minimize the risk of liability to himself by obtaining the protection of a judicial declaration, usually at considerable expense to the intended beneficiaries. We should, if possible, develop and apply rules of law which will eliminate the occasion for such litigation. One step in that direction would be to hold that a general residuary clause in a will is equally competent to execute a special power of appointment as it is to exercise a general power. See Bostwick v. Hurstel, 364 Mass. 282, 292 (1973).

 The court said, at 9: “We think that, unlike a general power, a special power is not ‘a close approximation to a property interest .... It is our opinion that the traditional common law distinction between ‘property’ and ‘powers’ . . . which with regard to general powers has in effect been overridden in cases cited above, persists with un*330diminished validity in the case of special powers and would alone serve as a sufficiently sound rationale for the nonapplicability of the canon in question to special powers.”