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61 Miss. 316

Tate v. Townsend

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided October 15, 1883

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1883-10-15

Hon. A. T. Roane, Judge. The appellees brought an action of ejectment against the appellants, the appellees claiming under the will of one Martha Fitzgerald, deceased, the appellants claiming under deed from John Haywood Fitzgerald, deceased. The case comes up on an agreed state of facts, which are as follows: Martha Fitzgerald died in June, 1860, testate.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1883-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently May 1969

4 state decisions

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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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Campbell, C. J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2By the will, John Haywood Fitzgerald took an estate for life with the power to dispose of it, if he should outlive his children, and at his death leaving children the land became theirs with the qualification that if they should not live to be twenty-one years *319old, it should go to Willie Fitzgerald. Whether the estate vested in the children of John at the death of the testatrix or only on the death of their father, the whole estate did not vest in him, but the limitation to his children was valid, and at his death they took the estate by virtue of the will. The word “children” is generally a word of purchase, and not of limitation, and there is nothing in the will to change this meaning. The word “descend” was used in the sense of go or belong to. It is evident that the children of John were objects of the bounty of the testatrix. She intended the estate for them after John’s enjoyment of it during his life. The limitation to them was valid, and no other question need to be considered, for that disposes of this case.

¶3Judgment affirmed.

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