Heuser v. Harris

• Decision Date: 31 January 1867
• Citation: 42 Ill. 425,1867 WL 4948
• Parties: CATHERINE HEUSER et al.v.JONATHAN M. HARRIS, Executor, etc., et al.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

42 Ill. 425

1867 WL 4948 (Ill.)

CATHERINE HEUSER et al.

v.JONATHAN M. HARRIS, Executor, etc., et al.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

January Term, 1867.

OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE

APPEAL from the Circuit Court of Madison county; the Hon. JOSEPH GILLESPIE, Judge, presiding.

This was a bill in chancery filed in the Circuit Court of Madison county, by Catherine Heuser and Mary Schneider, the appellants, against Jonathan M. Harris, executor of Henry Seibert, deceased, and the school directors of Union district No. 4, of town 5, range 6, west of the 3d principal meridian, and the County Court of Madison county, the appellees, to set aside the fourth clause contained in the will of the said Seibert, as being void for uncertainty, the same being bequests to said school district, and to the poor of Madison county, of the proceeds arising from the sale of certain lands, thereafter to be made by the executor. The bill was demurred to, and demurrer sustained and bill dismissed by the court below, whereupon an appeal was taken to this court.

The facts in this case are fully stated in the opinion.

Mr. DAVID GILLESPIE, for the appellants.

Mr. A. W. METCALF, for the appellees. Mr. JUSTICE BREESE delivered the opinion of the Court:

About the 6th of February, 1865, one Henry Seibert, then of Madison county, in this State, departed this life, leaving a will, which was duly proved in the probate court of that county. The will bore date, Madison county, October 4, 1862, the fourth clause of which, after appointing Jonathan M. Harris his ““administrator,” was as follows: “I do request that the administrator shall sell the land at public auction, to the highest bidder, first giving six months' notice in the Edwardsville paper and in one Alton paper, on time, as follows, one and two years credit, etc.; this money is to be divided as follows, one-half shall go to the school-district in which the farm lays, and shall be under the control of one person elected by the people of the district, and he shall be elected for four years at one time, and be required to give security for the faithful trust put in his hands, and no one shall receive any per cent for their trouble; this shall be loaned out, and none of it shall be used except the interest, and it for no other purpose than for schooling the children, and the other half shall go to the support of the poor of Madison county, but none of it shall be used but the interest, but first the administrator shall have a reasonable pay out of the proceeds of land for his labor.”

Catharine Heuser and Mary Schneider, being his sisters, and only relatives nearest of kin to the testator, exhibited their bill in chancery in the Madison Circuit Court against Jonathan M. Harris, to whom letters of administration with the will annexed had been granted, and the directors of school district No. 4, town 5, N. R., 6 W., and the County Court of Madison county, alleging that they were the only heirs at law of the deceased, and claimed that this fourth clause of the will was inoperative and void on account of uncertainty,-- that portion of it giving one-half of the proceeds of the sale of the land to the school district in which the farm was situate, in this, that by law the school directors of that district have the care, custody and control of all school money belonging to the district or accruing to the same, and are the only persons authorized by law to take charge of the same. That the will provides no mode by which the person who is to have control of this fund shall be elected; that, by law, school districts can be changed, and the will provides that the person shall be elected by the people of the district, applying indiscriminately to men, women and children, whether of sufficient understanding to vote or not; and the will further provides that this person, so to be elected, shall give security for the trust, without stating to whom such security shall be given, or the manner in which it is to be given, or the amount thereof, and therefore the provision cannot be executed. And as to that part of the will giving the other half of these proceeds to the support of the poor of Madison county, that is void for uncertainty, and cannot be carried into effect, because the money is not placed in the hands of any person for distribution, nor is there any method or manner prescribed in which it is to be distributed, or in what proportion, nor can it be ascertained to whom the money is to be distributed, as “the poor of Madison county” is a very uncertain and indeterminate term, and no method is provided by the will of ascertaining who are to take the benefits of the bequest. The bill charges that the administrator had no lawful authority to make sale of the land, as the title to it is in them, complainants, as the only heirs at law of the deceased.

The prayer is, that this fourth clause of the will be declared null and void, and that the administrator be enjoined from selling the land, and the title thereto be decreed in complainants.

A general demurrer was put in to this bill, which was sustained by the court, and the bill dismissed.

To reverse this decree this appeal is taken, and this decision on the demurrer and dismissing the bill is assigned as error.

It is argued by the counsel for appellants that the policy of the law is against bequests of the description made in this will, and the superior equities are in favor of the appellants, they being his sisters and only heirs at law, who should have been the natural objects of his charity, and he says that statutes have been passed in some of the States to prevent such disposition of property.

There being no statute in this State prohibiting such bequests, is it not a fair inference the law-making power of this State has not regarded them as impolitic? As to the superior equities of an heir at law over a devisee under a will, we are unable to perceive them. No next of kin, no matter how near he may be, can be said to have any equitable right to his kinsman's estate. The law of the land has placed every person's estate wholly under the control of the owner, subject to such final disposition of it as he may choose to make by his last will and testament, subject to the statutory rights of his widow, if he leaves one. Ever since the introduction of the practice of making wills it has been universally conceded that the testator may dispose of his property by his own will as he pleases.

A child has no natural right to the estate of his father: if he has, it is a right which cannot be asserted against the testamentary disposition of the estate by the father. So, in the absence of other relatives near of kin to the owner of an estate, a brother or sister, or parent, might seem to have a right to the estate, and so they would, in all these cases, upon intestacy, for it then becomes a legal, not an equitable right; so that it cannot be asserted, that the nearest of kin has any equity whatever in the estate of his kinsman. A disposition of it by the owner, by will, or by deed, there being no legal impediment, determines its destiny, and no court in the world can afford relief, or do more than sympathize with the disappointed expectant. We have seen no legislation of any State directed against the policy of such bequests, and recollect no judicial decision in that direction. On the contrary, the courts, both in England and in this country, have recognized and upheld such charities, following, in this respect, the civil law, from which the rudiments of the law of charities was undoubtedly derived. It was a fixed maxim in Roman jurisprudence, that legacies to pious uses, which included all legacies destined for works of piety or charity, whether they related to spiritual or temporal concerns, were entitled to peculiar favor and to be deemed privileged testaments. 2 Story's Eq. Jur. 489, § 1137. By this law, the construction of testaments of this nature was most liberal, and the legacies were never permitted to be lost, either by the uncertainty or failure of the persons or objects for which they were destined. As instances, if a legacy was given to the church, or to the poor generally, without any description of what church or what poor, this law sustained it, by giving it, in the first case, to the parish church of the place where the testator lived; and in the latter case, to the hospital of the same place; and if there was none, then to the poor of the same parish. Id. § 1139.

These principles of pious legacies under the high authority of the civil law, were readily introduced into the common law of England, anterior to the enactment of 43 Elizabeth, chapter 4, known as the statute of charitable uses, and have been known there and recognized for ages. Prior to this statute, however, devises to charitable uses generally, without imposing a trustee, and devises to a non-existing corporation, or to an unincorporated society, were held utterly void for want of a person capable of taking as devisee. It was to remedy this defect, that this statute was enacted, providing a mode of enforcing such uses by a commission under the direction of the Court of Chancery (Id. § 1146); but it was soon settled, that the remedy was not confined to the proceeding by commission, but that the Court of Chancery had jurisdiction by original bill. The mode of proceeding by commission has now fallen into disuse, and information in the name of the attorney-general, as an officer of the crown, the King being viewed as the father of the country, and the proceedings instituted for the public good, is now the usual mode.

A long and uninterrupted course of decisions under this statute shows, most conclusively, that bequests of the nature of those in the will in question have received the unqualified sanction of the English Court of Chancery. They are held to be within the letter and spirit of the statute 43 Elizabeth, chapter 4, for, in the preamble thereto, are enumerated devises “for poor people,” “for...