Court Opinion

ID: 9705675
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:15:59.285281+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:13.394732
License: Public Domain

Hammond, J.,
filed the following dissenting opinion.
Our case is that of a widow whose husband died, survived by siblings but no children, leaving a will which bequeathed all his personal property to his siblings. There is complete agreement that without the necessity of renunciation the widow is entitled to her legal share of the personalty. The majority, without any support in the case law, finds that this legal share is not $4,000—the figure specified in the currently applicable statutes—and one-half the net personalty, but $2,000—a figure not now mentioned at all in those statutes—and one-half the *12net personalty. I dissent, finding first that it is almost demonstrably clear that the preferred allowance of $4,000 is part of the widow’s total legal share and finding, second, that the determination of the $2,000 figure of the majority is unsupportable on any theory save the impermissible one (which perhaps has seeped from the District of Columbia into Maryland) of judicial legislation.
I state my reasons briefly because to do so at length would be but to write an essay which would serve no purpose and have no meaning. The Legislature by Ch. 108 of the Laws of 1964, effective June 1, 1964, several months after the crucial events of the present case occurred, amended the law to provide that a surviving spouse was barred, whether or not any part of the realty or personalty passed to him or her under the will, unless a specified renunciation is duly filed and then sets out just what is taken if such a renunciation is filed (in our situation it would be $4,000 and half the personalty and half the realty). The problem now before us will not come up again for decision.
At common law a widow in the situation of the widow here was entitled in intestacy to one-third of her husband’s personalty, if there were children, and half if there were not, and he could' not deprive her of it by his will. Griffith v. Griffith, 4 Har. & McH. 101. As had been done, in part at least, by earlier laws, by Ch. 101 of the Laws of 1798 the Legislature wrote the widow’s right in intestacy into the statutory law. In Coomes et al. v. Clements, 4 H. & J. 480, 483, Chief Judge Chase said (his colleagues agreeing in their own words), after referring to the full statutory recognition given by the Law of 1798 to the rule of the common law:
“The following deductions are plainly inferrible from those Acts [particularly the Act of 1798], If the deceased dies intestate, leaving a wife, and without a child, the widow shall have one-half of the personal estate. If the deceased makes a will, and makes no bequest of any part of his personal estate to his wife * * * and dies, leaving a wife and no child, she shall have one-half of the personal estate; because, as re*13spects his wife, he died intestate * * (Emphasis added.)
The Act of 1798 not only provided, as has been the statutory law since up to June 1, 1964, that if nothing passed by the will to the widow she need not renounce and was entitled to her legal share—which the court held was as in intestacy—but also provided for renunciation by the widow of provisions in the will unsatisfactory to her, and expressly limited the share of personalty she took upon renunciation of a bequest of personalty to one-third of the net “and no more.” Judge Johnson pointed out the difference in Coomes as follows:
“The Act of 1798, ch. 101, passed before the will in question was made, restricts the widow’s interest, whether children or not, to one-third in the cases to which the restriction applies. The case before the Court does not come within the restricted exception mentioned in the Act; and as the testator died without leaving children, or their representatives, I am of opinion the decision of the Orphans’ Court, giving her one-half, was correct.”
In Pacholder v. Rosenheim, 129 Md. 455, 458-59, where the will made no provision for the widow, the Court said: “Mrs. Pacholder is now claiming, not by virtue of the will, but in opposition to its provisions, and she is entitled, therefore, to the same interest and no other than if Mr. * * * Pacholder had died intestate.” (Emphasis added.)
In 1916 the Legislature made the legal share of a surviving widow in intestacy the same in realty as in personalty. Code (1957), Art. 46 §§ 1-4. In Pearre v. Grossnickle, 139 Md. 1, 9 (1921), where the husband left his wife personalty but no realty, the Court said:
“Mr. Grossnickle devised no part of his real estate to his wife, and consequently her legal rights therein were not affected by his will. Thomas v. Wood, 1 Md. Ch. 296; Durham v. Rhodes, 23 Md. 233. And as she did not elect to take her dower under Section 4 of Article 46 of the 4th Vol. of the Code of Public Gen*14eral Laws, she is entitled under the provisions of Section 3 of Article 46 of the said Code [the intestate provision for realty] to one-third of her deceased husband’s real estate [there being surviving children].” (Emphasis added.)
On the other hand, in cases such as Harris v. Harris, 139 Md. 187, decided on June 28, 1921, the same day as Pearre v. Grossnickle, (139 Md. 1), the Court noted that the then provisions for the rights of widows in the estates of their late husbands were literally copied from the Act of 1798 and held, after quoting the words of Judge Johnson in Coomes, that since the widow Harris had renounced, she was restricted to one-third of the net personalty despite the fact there were no children, because the statute said that in such case she should take “no more.”
Significantly less than a year after the Harris decision, the Legislature by Ch. 348 of the Laws of 1922 amended the renunciation statute—then § 302 of Art. 93—to provide that upon renunciation the surviving spouse was to take such share of the personalty “as he or she would have been entitled to in case of intestacy.”
In 1933 the Legislature increased the widow’s statutory legal share of personalty in intestacy by adding a prior preferred allowance of two thousand dollars. By Ch. 386 of the Laws of that year, then § 127—now § 137—of Art. 93 was repealed and reenacted to provide that where there was a surviving spouse and siblings but no child or parent, the spouse “shall take Two Thousand Dollars ($2,000.00) or its equivalent in property, or any interest therein, at its appraised value, and one-half of the residue” (the one-half being what she took before the amendment) .
This essentially was the state of the law when the Court in 1939 decided Marriott v. Marriott, 175 Md. 567, 576, a case in which the will gave the widow nothing. The Court said that in the Harris case “it was definitely decided that the statute of distribution in intestacy had no application where a decedent left a will.” This was not accurate or correct. Harris reiterated that where there was a will which was renounced—not a will which ignored the widow—the statutes in intestacy did not ap*15ply because the renunciation section said in terms that the widow took one-third “and no more.” The quoted statement in Marriott also overlooked the significant fact that in 1922, after Harris, the Legislature in terms made the intestacy statutes apply to cases of renounced wills just as the Court had applied them in wills ignoring the widow in Coomes, Pacholder and Pearre.
Marriott then held that upon the authority “of the cases hereinbefore cited” and the fact that the Act of 1933, which added the $2,000, in terms applied only to intestacy the Act “cannot be held to relate to cases in which the decedent has executed a will.” The Court found comfort and support for its holding— the first ever to decide that where the will ignored the widow she did not take what she would have taken in intestacy—in the reasoning that the Legislature recognized that in intestacy “the decedent has indicated no discrimination against his wife” and the Legislature has been liberal with her, and if the Legislature had intended “to apply the same liberality to the estates of testates in those cases where the widow was ignored, it could, and doubtless would, have said so.”
The Marriott decision on the point rested on a specious legal foundation and, some four months after its decision, the Legislature, recognizing it as unsound or undesirable, ripped away its philosophical basis of presumed legislative intent and, in effect, reversed it.
By Ch. 498 of the Laws of 1939 the Legislature amended then § 314 (§ 333) of Art. 93 so as to add the then $2,000 preferred allowance to the legal share of the surviving spouse where “in effect nothing [of personalty] shall pass” under the will, by Ch. 499 added the two thousand dollars to then § 311 (§ 329) of Art. 93, the renunciation section. Thus the Legislature showed it did intend just what Marriott had said it had not intended—“to apply the same liberality to the estates of testates in those cases where the widow was ignored [as to estates of intestates].” There can be little, if any, doubt that if the 1939 amendments to then §§ 311 and 314 had been the law when Marriott was decided, the widow would have been given the then two thousand dollar allowance, and little, if any, doubt that the Legislature meant that thereafter in a case where the decedent is survived by a widow and siblings only and no chil*16dren, the widow takes the preferred allowance—raised to $4,000 by Ch. 717 of the Laws of 1957 as to then § 132 (§ 137) of Art. 93 and to $4,000 as to §§ 329 and 333 of Art. 93 by Ch. 20 of the Laws of 1959—and one-half of the net personalty, whether (a) the husband died intestate, or (b) his will leaving personalty to the wife was renounced, or (c) whether the will ignored the wife. The legal share is $4,000 plus one-half the personalty in each case, and this is true regardless of what proportion of the real estate the widow takes or does not take. The $4,000 allowance comes first and does not depend on any factor other than those who survive the decedent and the renunciation if one is required. What the surviving spouse takes under the statutes after and in addition to the $4,000 does not affect or alter the right to the $4,000, as I read the statutes plainly to say.
The legislative history gives firm support to this conclusion. Where the will ignored the widow she has taken as in intestacy from the beginning—except for the brief Marriott interlude— and when the Legislature in 1922 recognized the effect of Harris under modern conditions, it made the widow’s share of personalty upon renunciation the same as in intestacy. In intestacy the widow here would have taken $4,000 and half the net personalty, and she should have the same in this case because the will ignored her as to personalty.