Court Opinion

ID: 9865534
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 18:51:17.840095+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:32:53.259967
License: Public Domain

On Kehearing.
The motion for rehearing seeks principally to have the court-review its decision wherein it holds that the indefeasible vesting of the estates of the remaindermen depended upon their surviving to the ages specified in the will, and not also upon their surviving the life-tenant. The plaintiff has filed a motion, setting up that all of the plaintiffs but one are above the age of thirty-five, and -she is more than thirty, and asking that the court give direction so as to allow plaintiffs to set up these facts by amendment in the trial court, on the return of the remittitur. This motion is verified by affidavit.
We think that our former holding is correct. It is most consistent with the legally ascertained intent of the testator to say that the estates of the remaindermen depended for final vesting upon their respectively surviving the ages specified in the will, and not rrpon their respectively surviving their mother, the life-tenant. It would be contrary to the Code and to the numerous precedents for the court to take the latest rather than the earliest possible date consistently with the words of the will, for the indefeasible vesting of the estates in remainder. This will makes it plainer than did many wills which have been similarly construed, that the testator did not intend to make the final vesting of the remaindermen’s estate depend upon their respectively surviving the • life-tenant. The testator’s apparent major purpose in this respect was to keep the trust executory, and not to let his children have their shares *458indefeasibly vest in them till they arrived at what he conceived to be the ages at which they could prudently own and manage it. The clauses relating to the death of his widow were inserted as necessary to demark the life-estate in her. The fact that if the widow remarried most of the income went to the children when they arrived at the specified ages indicates that he did not intend for the vesting of the remainder interest to depend on the widow’s death. Under this will, the holder of the life-estate being sui juris, the trust would become executed when the remaindermen became sui juris and their estates indefeasibly vested, even though the widow were still in life, and even though she had not conveyed her life-estate to the remaindermen. Accordingly, the decision is adhered to. It seems consistent with the law and justice of the case that the plaintiffs should be allowed so to amend their petition as to show that all of them but one have arrived at the age of thirty-five years, and that she is more than thirty, and thus avoid the effects that might flow from the sustaining of the general demurrer. It would not be right for the plaintiffs to lose their estates by reason of the failure to allege their ages. Therefore the judgment of affirmance heretofore rendered is amended by adding the direction that the plaintiffs may file in the trial court, before the judgment of this court is made the judgment of the superior court or within ten days thereafter, an amendment to their petition in the above respect, and that the court may then pass upon the petition as amended without the previous judgment sustaining the demurrer being given effect. The costs of the appeal are taxed against the plaintiffs in error.

Judgment adhered to, with direction.

All the Justices concur, except Atkinson, P. J., and Bell, J., disqualified.