Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

105 Mass. 538

Webster v. Webster

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided November 15, 1870

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1870-11-15

Bill nr equity by the executors of the will of Nathan Webster, praying for instructions. Held: or are to be paid over to Gardner Webster and added by him to the trust fund left by the will for the benefit of Everett Webster and his children, or are to be distributed among the heirs of said testator.” 2. “ In what manner and in what proportion shall the respective devisees and legatees contribute to any whose estate' has been…

Relies on Sears v. Putnam

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1870-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently November 1946

8 state decisions

4018701880189019001910192019301940decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

GRAY, J.

¶1The general rule is well settled, that a sale of real estate by a testator after maMng his will operates as a revocation to the extent of the estate sold only. Hawes v. Humphrey, 9 Pick. 350. Clark v. Packard, 9 Gray, 417. Carter v. Thomas, 4 Greenl. 341.

¶2In the present case, it is manifest from the will itself that the testator intended that such share as Everett and Ms cMldren should take should be put in trust, to be applied, at the discretion of the trustee, for the benefit of Everett during his life, and after Ms death to be transferred to his cMldren outright on their coming of age. This intent would be defeated by declaring him wholly intestate.

¶3If we could indulge in conjectures, we might infer that, in the period of ten years that intervened between the making of the will and Ms death, he deliberately concluded that, as his other sons had no children, the provision made for the children of Everett should be increased.

¶4*543But however that may be, we are all of opinion that there ia nothing in the acts of the testator since the execution of the will, from which we can, consistently with the rules of law, presume an intention to revoke his will in any respect in which it purports by its terms to. dispose of his property in the condition in which he left it at his death.

¶5This case differs from those in which the subsequent sale by the testator has been of substantially his whole estate, making it impossible to give effect to the dispositions of his will; as in Cooper’s estate, 4 Penn. State, 88 ; or in which material parts of the general scheme of the testator have been held illegal and void, and therefore the whole scheme has been declared invalid; as in Harris v. Clark, 3 Selden, 242, and Sears v. Putnam, 102 Mass. 5.

¶6It is admitted by the parties claiming under the will, that the residuary legatees are not entitled to contribution from the specific devisees for that part of the estate which has been taken by the widow, waiving the provisions of the will, and claiming her legal rights. See Blaney v. Blaney, 1 Cush. 107.

¶7The result is, that so much of the proceeds of the real estate sold by the testator since the making of the will, as is not needed to satisfy the rights of the widow, is to be held by the plaintiffs in trust for Everett and his children, according to the directions of the will. Decree accordingly.

/105/mass/538 · .json · Public domain