Court Opinion

ID: 9665045
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:37:47.819793+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:12.511568
License: Public Domain

MASSEY, Chief Justice
(concurring).
In agreeing with the reasoning and holding as expressed in the opinion written by my colleague, Associate Justice RENFRO, I take occasion to note that in the case of Kenaday v. Sinnott (1900), 179 U.S. 606, 21 S.Ct. 233, 45 L.Ed. 339, a very similar and nearly identical question was decided by that court upon the same applicable principles of law.
In that case the court held that its decision turned upon the question of whether an irrebuttable presumption arises that the testator, by reducing the amount of money on hand at the date of his will, intended that the amount of such reduction, though remaining in his assets in another form, should be distributed to his next of kin rather than to his wife to whom the bequest of. money had been made by his .will. It is noted that the testator had- reduced the amount of his cash money by way of purchase of $9,000 in United States bonds between the date of execution of his will and date of his death.
The court held that where an intention of benefit was once expressed, to make its taking effect turn upon the contingency of the condition of the testator’s property remaining unchanged, instead of upon the continuance of the same feelings which in the first instance prompted the selection of the legatee> required, as it ought, clear language to-convey that intention.
Then, with due honors paid to the legal necessity of applying principles of law of ademption to legacies of the categories “demonstrative” and “specific”, the court held that whether a legacy should be treated as a demonstrative legacy, or as one dependent exclusively upon a particular fund for payment, is a question of construction, to be determined according to what may appear to have been the general intention of the testator, and in a case where it was not clearly apparent that the testator, by converting money into bonds, intended to revoke the general intention of benefit expressed by his will, such general beneficial intention will prevail and the bequest will be considered by law as a demonstrative legacy, not subject to. ademption. The court further elaborated that legacies will not be held specific when the result would be that the mere transmutation of money into securities raised an irrebuttable presumption of ademption inconsistent with the intention of the testator as plainly deducible from all the terms of his will taken together.
There is no question but what at the time of the making of the will, here under construction, that Mrs. Flower fully intended that her husband’s kin were to receive $20,000 in cash from the proceeds of her deceased husband’s estate, held by her during her lifetime, and left of said estate fund at time of her death. This intention was to -be conditioned only upon there being at least $40,000 in value as to said deceased husband’s estate, remaining at date of her death. And, in event she might have found it necessary to use the corpus of said estate to such an extent that its value (as of the date of her death) was less than $40,000, then and upon that contingency, she intended to provide and did provide by her will that her husband’s kin should receive fifty per cent of the amount so left of that fund. There is *691no evidence that Mrs. Flower, in converting the money in question into securities, intended any abrogation of the bequest to her deceased husband’s kinsmen. Under such circumstances we must consider that her intentions as originally expressed remained unaltered. Having arrived at this conclusion, I am of the opinion that the law requires the legacy in question to be construed as a demonstrative legacy not subj ect to ademption.