32 Conn. App. 152 - Cooley v. Cooley’s Empirical Analysis
1993
Citation profile
26 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 26 later decisions — most recently October 2025 · most notably Bornemann v. Bornemann (1998), Powell-Ferri v. Ferri (2017)
26 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.
Relationships
Relies on Vose v. Cross · 13 Conn. App. 300 - O'Neill v. O'Neill · Rubin v. Rubin · State v. Dufault · Barnes v. Barnes
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 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The issue of intent as it relates to the interpretation of a trust instrument . . . is to be determined by examination of the language of the trust instrument itself and not by extrinsic evidence of actual intent.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“cannot rewrite . . . a trust instrument. The expressed intent must control, although this is to be determined from reading the instrument as a whole in the light of the circumstances surrounding the . . . settlor when the instrument was executed , including the condition of his estate, his relations to his family and beneficiaries, and their situation and condition. The construing court will put itself as far as possible in the position of the . . . [settlor], in the effort to construe . . . [any] uncertain language used by him in such a way as shall, conformably to the language, give force and effect to his intention. . . . But [t]he quest is to determine the meaning of what the . . . [settlor] said and not to speculate upon what he meant to say.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.