Court Opinion

ID: 9448257
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:28:29.474757+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:20.807339
License: Public Domain

PRETTYMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) .
The basic rule of the law of wills, as I understand it, is that the intention of the testator, if it can be ascertained from language in the will, governs. This means what he intended as a matter of practical reality in his own mind, in so far as his words indicate his purpose. That question is devoid of consideration of legalisms and the niceties of judicial semantic ascription.
In the case at bar the testatrix clearly stated her intention that her property was to remain in her own family, with her own descendants. In the last part of the long sentence from which the court quotes in its opinion, she wrote:
«* * * it being my intention that [if both daughters died or married] the entire property is to be equally divided among my children and the descendants of any deceased child or children as hereinbefore specified.”
The purport of that emphasis upon her intention seems to me indisputable. She had in mind, and attempted to make clear, that at the time when the division was appointed to take place, i. e., when the property was rid of its incumbent trust, her property should go to her own children and their descendants, and to no one else. Since that intention is clear, that ends the matter. The property must go as intended.
The court construes the early part of the provision it quotes. It correctly applies the rules of construction. In so far as that part of the provision is concerned, and in so far as legal rules of construction are concerned, the court, I agree, is correct. The error, it seems to me, is that the court ignores the plain expression of intent in the latter part of the quoted provision. It concludes upon construction that the property should be divided into five parts and then subdivided among the legatees, assignees, or heirs at law of each of the original children. Since four of those children had no descendants, this construction means that four of the five parts go to collaterals, in-laws, or strangers; the only direct descendant of the testatrix or of any of her children gets only one-fifth. This, to my mind, is a far cry from the clear intention of the testatrix, as expressed in the simple and emphatic restatement of her intent quoted above.
This preference of a testator to keep his property in those of his own blood is *415a usual one. As the Court of Appeals of New York once remarked: “Of two doubtful interpretations, that favoring the blood of the testator rather than strangers will be adopted. Human nature usually so acts.” 1
The legal point I make is that a court does not apply to the language of a will rules designed to give meaning to meaningless expressions, if the court can ascertain from the will the actual intention of the testator, i. e., what the testator really meant to do with his property. Only if the actual intention of the testator cannot be ascertained from the four corners of the will does the law undertake to assign an artificial meaning and result to the words used. Lacking knowledge of actual intent, the courts ascribe by an abstruse system of legalisms a meaning to the will and thus, by a naked fiction, an intention to the testator.
In the learned authorities, such as the Restatement,2 the phrase “judicially ascertained intent” is used, but that term means, first, what the testator had in mind, judicially ascertained from the language of the instrument. If his actual intent is clearly to be found in the will, the court so finds, and this is the judicially ascertained intent. The Restatement says, for example, “The dominant objective of construing a conveyance is to determine the disposition which the conveyor wanted to make.” 3 The use of the phrase “judicially ascertained intent” to include a plain purpose indubitably expressed in simple words seems to me to create confusion. But the real meaning of the authorities nevertheless seems to me to be clear.
The cases cited by the court, Pyne v. Pyne,4 Scott v. Powell,5 and Episcopal Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital v. Goodwin,6 do not suggest a different view. In Pyne v. Pyne, we carefully pointed out:
“The basic, always controlling, rule in the construction of wills is the intent of the testator. If that intent can be discerned in the language of the will, read, of course, in the light of the surrounding circumstances, there is an end to the matter.” 7
We searched that will for “indicia of intent” and then went on to say: “If these indicia of intent within the will be not conclusive, we must ascertain the meaning which the law attaches to the provision in controversy.”8 We found that the available “indicia of intent” and the law’s construction of the terms were the same. In Scott v. Powell we meticulously searched the whole will and considered its “scheme”, and thus ascertained an “evident intent that the property should go to the testatrix’s descendants so long as there were any.”9 In Episcopal Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital v. Goodwin, the problem which arose sixty-three years after the will had been written was obviously not contemplated by the testatrix, and so we laboriously applied the law’s rules of construction. All three of those cases were correctly decided, in my judgment. None of them applies to the case at bar. In this latter the actual intent of the testatrix is clear, and we should not belabor the matter. Her intention is all there is to the ease.
I would reverse.

. In re Booker’s Will, 248 N.Y. 361, 162 N.E. 283 (1928).

. 3 Property § 241 (1940).

. Id., Comment c.

. 81 U.S.App.D.C. 11, 154 F.2d 297 (D.C.Cir.1946).

. 86 U.S.App.D.C. 277, 182 F.2d 75 (D.C.Cir.1950).

. 107 U.S.App.D.C. 375, 278 F.2d 255 (D.C.Cir.1960).

. 81 U.S.App.D.C. at page 14, 154 F.2d at page 300.

. 81 U.S.App.D.C. at page 15, 154 F.2d at page 301.

. 86 U.S.App.D.C. at page 283, 182 F.2d at page 81.