Court Opinion

ID: 9642184
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:51:32.728799+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:44.256627
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent. Contrary to the majority’s assertion, testator’s direction to his trustees to “transfer and convey” the Aubrey property does not “clearly and unambiguously” establish an intent to make a gift. If anything, the language of the codicil to testator’s will can reasonably be read to require a different result — that the Aubrey property be sold.
The codicil provides:
“My said residence or farm cottage shall not be sold by my Trustees so long as the same is occupied by my said wife pursuant to the foregoing provisions, without her written consent; but, upon obtaining such consent, or upon the death of my said wife, my Trustees shall transfer and convey the aforesaid real estate to such of the following as may desire to acquire the same for such public use, as a park or otherwise, as they may deem most suitable, preference being given in the order named: Commissioners of Fairmont Park; Montgomery County; St. Thomas Church, Whitemarsh; Whitemarsh Township. I further direct my Trustees to suggest, but not to require, that the body acquiring title to said real estate designate the same as ‘The Aubrey Memorial Park’.”
By this codicil, testator authorized his trustees to “transfer and convey” the Aubrey residence on one of two conditions — the written consent of his widow, or the widow’s death. By itself the meaning of “transfer and convey” is consistent with both a sale and a gift. However, testator specifically stated that “[m]y said residence or farm cottage shall not be sold by my Trustees so long as the same is occupied by my said wife pursuant to the foregoing provisions, without her written consent . . .. ” Testator followed *490this language immediately with the direction that, “upon obtaining such consent, . .. my Trustees shall transfer and convey ... . ” Testator’s language “such consent,” in context, can refer only to the widow’s consent to a sale. Surely testator would not have required the trustees to obtain the widow’s consent to a sale as a prerequisite to a gift.
If on the contingency of the widow’s written consent the trustees must “transfer and convey” the property for consideration, so too on the contingency of the widow’s death the property also must be sold. Common sense dictates that the words “transfer and convey” cannot mean one thing in the case of one contingency and a different thing in the case of another. Indeed, it is a well-settled canon that “[a] construction which will satisfy the language used without leading to absurd or inconvenient results is to be preferred . . ..” Duffy Estate, 313 Pa. 101, 106, 169 A. 142, 144 (1933).
The testamentary plan of testator was to require his trustees to sell his valuable asset for the benefit of his family. It was not his plan to confer the windfall, which the majority grants, upon complete strangers.
The decree of the orphans’ court, therefore, must be reversed.
O’BRIEN, C. J., joins in this dissenting opinion.