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87 N.C. 492

Hill v. . Toms

Supreme Court of North Carolina

Decided October 5, 1882

Supreme Court of North Carolina · decided 1882-10-05

Civil Action for construction of a will tried at Spring Term, 1882, of Rutherford Superior Court, before Gudger, J. J. P. Mauney died in the year.1864 or 1865, having previously made his will in which are contained the following clauses; “ I give and bequeath to my beloved wife, Charlotte Mauney, twelve hundred dollars in money,” and slaves and other enumerated-articles of personal property not necessary to be set out in detail; and the testator adds, “ I also give her the…

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1882-10-05

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently April 1903

3 state decisions

10188218901900decided

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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Smith, C. J:,

¶1 after stating the case. We concur with His Honor in his interpretation of the will and the legal effect of the clauses on which the controversy depends. Where there is a residuary disposition of both personal and real estate, while the former is primarily liable in exoneration of the latter, yet both are chargeable with the payment of the money legacies. “ This, however, is not on the footing of a charge on land like the annuities in this case,” remarks Pearson, C. J., in Robinson v. McIver, 63 N. C., 645, and repeated in Johnson v. Farrell, 64 N. C., 266, “ but on the ground that in order to ascertain what is embraced in the residuary fund, it is necessary to take out the specific legacies and then to deduct the pecuniary legacies, and only what remains is the rest or residue of the estate.”

¶2 A recent writer also remarks: Legacies are charged on the land, when the residue of the realty and personalty is bequeathed in one mass. But a chaige of legacies on all the real estate of the testator does not charge lands specifically devised. O’Hara on Wills, 241.

¶3 The testator specifically designates the portion of his estate from which his representative is to derive the means of discharging the bequests, and appropriates the land and the money into which it- is to be converted after the death of his wife, with equal clearness in the direction that it “ be equally divided among my (his) children now living and the children of Drusilla Hill,” the children taking a sixth part.

¶4*496 There is no principle upon which these beneficiaries can be deprived of the specific gift of the proceeds of the sale of the land to make up the losses of a money legacy caused by the emancipation of the slaves, from which source alone the payment is to be made, any more than if they had died a natural death. Johnson v. Osborne, Phil. Eq., 59.

¶5 The cases which seem to have been relied on by the appellants for disturbing the dispositions made of his estate by the testator, (Lassiter v. Wood, 63 N. C., 360; Macon v. Macon, 75 N. C., 376; and Alexander v. Summey, 66 N. C., 577,) are put on the ground of effectuating a manifest general intent to which certain special dispositions inconsistent therewith must yield, and do not warrant a subversion of the dispositions and appropriations in the will under review; and as was said in Holman v. Price, 84 N. C., 86, “ this principle” (subordinating the particular to the predominant intent) “ was pressed into service and carried to its extreme limits ” in the two first cited cases.

¶6 No necessity here exists for a departure from the plain provisions of the will. Slaves are included in all the legacies, and all the legatees share in tire loss of this form of property, as well as those whose bequests in money were to be derived from it. The land when sold is given as well to the plaintiffs as to the children of the testator, and no fancied equality intended in the distribution can justify the manifest and obvious dispositions of the estate being disturbed.

¶7 The gift over of the proceeds of the sale of the land is to the “ children now living ” and certainly the intestate son, Jacob G. Mauney, living at the time of the death of his mother, is included, and, notwithstanding his subsequent death, transmitted a'vested interest in the fund to his administrator, and the latter is entitled to share with the others therein.

¶8 No error. Affirmed.

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