Court Opinion

ID: 9520295
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:35:35.007471+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:45:58.414276
License: Public Domain

*471Currie, J.
{concurring). The trust instrument does expressly provide for one exception from the requirements of ch. 320, Stats., that investments must be made in “legáis” in the absence of provisions in the instrument conferring wider investment powers. This is the provision in paragraph 4 which authorizes the trustee to retain as trust investments “the assets and securities now comprised in said trust . . . whether or not the same conformed to the rules prescribed by the laws of Wisconsin for the investment of trust funds/1
While the rule of construction of “expressio unius est exclusio alterius11 (the expression of one thing excludes another) is not to be blindly followed in all cases, its invocation in the present instance seems particularly appropriate. This is because the quoted wording from paragraph 4 discloses that the scrivener was well versed in the proper language to be employed in stating an exemption from the requirements of ch. 320, Stats. Thus the inference is inescapable that he would have used like specific language to express a general dispensation of all compliance with the provisions of such chapter. Such inference is further confirmed by the fact that the lawyer who drafted the trust instrument was the late Harvey J. Frame of Waukesha, who had had long and extensive experience in drafting wills and trust instruments.
The case of Equitable Trust Co. v. Snader (1934), 20 Del. Ch. 278, 174 Atl. 132, holds that a specific grant by the will of the testatrix of discretion to a trustee of a testamentary trust to invest in real estate, a “nonlegal” in Delaware, is to be construed as evidencing a desire that other “nonlegals” be avoided on the principle of expressio unius est exclusio alterius. This case also lays down the principle that where there are two possible constructions of a trust instrument, under one of which investment in “nonlegals” would be permitted and under the other excluded, that construction should be adopted which opposes the existence in the trustee of a wide discretionary power.