Knight v. Knight

Decided November 30, 1894

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1894-11-30

Bill in equity, filed December 14,1893, by one of the executors under the will of John Knight, against Edward S. Knight, his co-executor, and others, all children of the testator, to obtain the instructions of the court as to the construction of the fourth article of the will. The case was heard by Barker, J., and reported for the consideration of the full court on the bill, the answers of the several defendants and certain agreed facts, and was as follows.

Relies on Ide v. Ide · Kelley v. Meins · Joslin v. Rhoades

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1894-11-30

How this case has been cited

Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently April 1969

20 state decisions

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.

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Field, C. J.

¶1We are of opinion that the widow of the testator took the absolute property in the one seventh part of the residue of the real and personal estate given her by the fourth article of the will. The clause to be construed more nearly resembles those construed in Ide v. Ide, 5 Mass. 500, Kelley v. Meins, 135 Mass. 231, Joslin v. Rhoades, 150 Mass. 301, and Foster v. Smith, 156 Mass. 379, than in the cases in which it has been held that a life estate was given.

¶2It follows that one seventh part of the residue of the estate of John Knight remaining in the hands of the executors of his estate belongs to the estate of the widow, and a decree should be entered accordingly.

¶3So ordered.