Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

31 Miss. 134

Nash v. Young

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided April 15, 1856

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1856-04-15

Hon. A. P. Hill, judge. Mary E. Nash, the appellant, being the widow of Madison Gr. Nash, deceased, filed her petition in the court below, seeking to have set aside to her the real and personal estate of her late husband, which, by law, was exempt from execution in his lifetime. The court sustained her claim as to the personalty, and overruled it, as to real estate. From this decision she appealed, and the executor of her husband took a cross-appeal.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1856-04-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently June 1973

5 state decisions

201856186018701880189019001910192019301940195019601970decided

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 →

Per curiam.'

¶1— The only question of any importance in this case is, whether a widow is entitled to so much of the estate of her deceased husband as is exempt by law from execution, when the husband has disposed of the property by his will, and the widow has renounced the will.

¶2The principle which settles this question was decided at the last term, in the case of Turner v. Turner, 30 Miss. R. 428. It is there held, that the right of the widow to such property exists by *135descent or distribution, and that the statute never contemplated that the husband’s right to dispose of it by will or otherwise should be interfered with; that her right is not absolute, but dependent upon her husband dying without making any disposition of the property. If, as in that case, provision be made for her in the will, she will be precluded of her general right of distribution of his estate, unless she renounce the will. But if no provision be made for her in the will, and she renounce, yet she will be entitled only to her share of the estate generally, and is not entitled to any specific part of it which has been disposed of by the will. Consequently, whether provision be made for her in the will or not, or whether she renounce the will or not, she will not be entitled to specific property of this description which is disposed of by the will.

¶3The judgment below is in opposition to this view, and is reversed, and the cause remanded.

/31/miss/134 · .json · Public domain