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36 Ala. 159

Coleman v. Camp

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided January 15, 1860

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1860-01-15

Appeal.from the Chancery Court of Choctaw.'. Held: that Mrs. Kemp took a life-estate in the property, subject to a charge for the support and education of the grand-children; and that the complainant had an adequate and complete remedy at law.

Relies on McCroan v. Pope

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1860-01-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently May 1922

6 state decisions

201860187018801890190019101920decided

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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STONE, J.

¶1If the rights of Mrs. Kemp rested alone on the second clause of the will, we would be strongly inclined to hold, that she took the life-estate in trust for the equal benefit of herself and the children of Washington Kemp, deceased. The same words are employed in that clause to confer on each their respective interests. The fourth clause, however, sheds light on this question, and leaves us no room to doubt, that Mrs. Kemp was the chief object of testator’s bounty; and that his object was simply to incumber her life-estate with the support and education of his grand-children. That clause, after making a devise to testator’s daughter, Mrs. Oahoon, of a tract of land, employs this emphatic language — “ which” [the land devised] “is excepted out of the life-estate heretofore given to my wife.” This is the testator’s exposition of the language found in the, second clause, and confers on Mrs. Kemp a life-estate in the property devised and bequeathed. McCroan v. Pope, 17 Ala. 612.

¶2[2.] Under this view, complainant had a complete and adequate remedy at law, and his bill was without equity.

¶3Decree of the chancellor affirmed.

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