Court Opinion

ID: 9711026
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:23:05.310176+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:01.748188
License: Public Domain

MANDERINO, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent. When the testator, Isaac Frank, wrote that the trust shall terminate “at the decease of my last surviving child and when both my daughters-in-law and my son-in-law shall have died or remarried,” he intended that the trust should terminate at the death of the survivor of his three children and their spouses known to him. The natural construction of “both my daughters-in-law” would refer to the two daughters-in-law then married to testator’s sons. The majority’s construction, including daughters-in-law unknown to testator, is unnatural and strained.
The income of the trust is currently distributed one-third to Bessie Frank Anathan’s children, one-third to Ralph J. Frank’s children, and one-third to Mary K. Frank (William’s second spouse). If the trust is considered terminated, the corpus distribution would be the same except that Mary K. would get one-ninth of the corpus and William’s children would get two-ninths. However, under the majority’s holding the trust will not terminate until the death of Mary K., when the corpus will be distributed as follows: one-third to Bessie’s children, one-third to Robert Frank’s children, and because William did not exercise his power of appointment, one third to the intestate heirs of William. Thus, if the children of William predecease Mary K., which is a very real possibility since Mary K. is only six years older than William’s eldest son, then one or more of the children of William will never receive any benefit whatsoever from the trust. This plan thwarts the testator’s intent: the trust instrument indicates a definite intent to benefit the testator’s grandchildren. The children of William are members of the class of grandchildren, and the testator did not intend to postpone *128the distribution of the corpus of the trust until the death of a much younger daughter-in-law unknown to him.