Court Opinion

ID: 9849124
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:35:03.593187+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:01.547662
License: Public Domain

Ryan, J.
(concurring). I concur in the opinion and judgment of the Court, and I write separately only to emphasize my conviction that Mrs. Maloney did not express in her inter vivos trust the intention that the term "grandchild” or its equivalent, as used in the trust, should be construed to exclude her later adopted grandchildren.
Had we been called upon, without explicit guidance from the Legislature, to determine whether Mrs. Maloney, at the time she executed her inter vivos trust, intended that any children who may later have been adopted by either of her sons were to be considered to be her grandchildren within the meaning of the trust, our task might have *642been more difficult than it actually is. As events occurred, however, the Legislature has greatly simplified our task and, in my judgment, made the construction of this trust easy and evident.
The trust document was executed in 1964. In 1978, with the enactment of MCL 700.128; MSA 27.5128, the Legislature mandated, in effect, that the term "grandchild” or "its equivalent” in Mrs. Maloney’s trust "shall be construed” to include her adopted grandchildren "unless a contrary intention appears by the terms of the instrument . . . 1 (Emphasis added.) Therefore, our duty is simply to examine the language of the instrument to determine whether Mrs. Maloney expressed an intention that her later adopted grandchildren were not to be considered to be her "grandchild,” "issue,” "heir,” "descendant,” or "beneficiary,” because that is the "contrary intention” but for which the Legislature has commanded that all of Mrs. Maloney’s grandchildren, biological and adopted, are entitled to take under the trust.
After the most careful scrutiny of the trust instrument, I can find nothing in the language of the trust that suggests even remotely that Mrs. Maloney gave the slightest consideration to including or excluding her later adopted grandchildren, or even that she adverted at all to the possibility that she may someday have grandchildren by adoption. It is sound to conclude, judging from the *643language of the instrument at least, that Mrs. Maloney never considered the matter. In using the words "born” and "date of birth” in the trust, Mrs. Maloney and her scrivener were employing common, familiar, and convenient terms to describe, as my brother Cavanagh says, "the mechanics of the administration of the trust.” They were establishing a method, by reference to an event the settlor did consider probable, having grandchildren, for the orderly and uniform subdivision of the trust corpus in order that Mrs. Maloney could make provision for equal treatment of all her grandchildren.
To conclude that Mrs. Maloney intended that "grandchild” and "grandchildren,” as used in the trust, did not include grandchildren who might later be adopted, and that she expressed that purpose by employing the terms "born” and "date of birth,” is to ascribe to Mrs. Maloney an intention to divide her grandchildren into two classes, biological and adopted, and to cut oif from her beneficence her later adopted grandchildren solely because they were adopted; and to do so by employing the most imprecise, abstruse, and cryptic language imaginable in a trust instrument that is otherwise a model of clarity, simplicity, and lucidity.
For those reasons, it is my judgment that only by the most strained and unfriendly interpretation of the trust instrument can it be concluded that Mrs. Maloney intended to foreclose her later adopted grandchildren from sharing in the family wealth to the same extent as their cousins.
Williams, C.J., and Levin, J., concurred with Ryan, J.

 "In the construction of a trust agreement or will, whether executed on, before, or after June 23, 1966, the term 'child’, 'grandchild’, 'issue’, 'heir’, 'descendant’, 'beneficiary’ or other equivalent term shall be construed to include any adopted person and his descendants whether natural or adopted unless a contrary intention appears by the terms of the instrument or unless the estate devised to the 'child’, 'grandchild’, 'issue’, 'heir’, 'descendant’, 'beneficiary’ or equivalent person vested before June 23, 1966, in an already ascertained person or persons who have an immediate indefeasible right of enjoyment or a present indefeasible fixed right of future enjoyment in the estate.” MCL 700.128; MSA 27.5128.