Sparhawk v. Cloon’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 19 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “• “At law, any property, real or personal, .that a man owns, may be alienated by him, or may, unless specially exempted by statute, be taken for the payment of his debts; and no form of grant or device can enable the grantee or dev-isee to hold the estate without its being subject to alienation, attachment, and execution. From the time of Lord Eldon, the same rule has prevailed in the English Court of Chancery to the extent of holding that where the income of a trust estate is given to any person (other than a married woman) for life, the equitable estate for life is alienable by, and liable in equity to the debts of, the cestui que trust, and that this quality is so- inseparable from the estate, that no provision, however express, which does not operate as a cesser or limitation of the estate itself, can protect it from his debts. The English doctrine has been approved in many decisions and dicta in this country. On the other hand, it has been maintained bjr judges whose opinions are entitled to the highest respect that the founder of a trust may secure the enjoyment of it to other persons, the objects of his bounty, by providing that it shall not be alienable by them or be subject to be taken by their creditors; and that his intentions' in this regard, when clearly expressed by him, must bo carried out by the court.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Reed v. Munn