In re Wetmore

• Citation: 99 F. 703
• Decision Date: 19 February 1900
• Docket Number: 27.
• Parties: In re WETMORE.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Pennsylvania

99 F. 703

In re WETMORE.

No. 27.

United States District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania.

February 19, 1900

Richard C. Dale, for exceptant.

Hatch &amp Wickes, for bankrupt.

McPHERSON District Judge.

At the time the bankrupt filed his schedules, he did not include therein such interest as may have then existed under the following clause of his father's will:

'I give and bequeath to my executors hereinafter named, other than my wife, the sum of $100,000 (in cash, or in securities or stock valued by my executors at that sum) upon trust to keep the same invested, and to receive the income thereof, and that, after deducting reasonable charges for the management of the said trust, to apply the net amount of such income, from time to time as it shall accrue, to the use of my wife, Sarah Taylor Wetmore, so long as she shall live; and I empower my said wife to dispose of the principal sum so held in trust, and any accumulations thereof, by last will and testament, duly executed by her, and in such manner as she shall think proper; and, in default of such disposition by will, I give the said trust fund, upon her decease, to my own then surviving next of kin, in like manner and shares as if the same were to be then distributed as my own proper estate, dying at time intestate.'

He was adjudged a bankrupt on January 13, 1899, and in the following March his mother died, having exercised the foregoing power of appointment by bequeathing to the bankrupt unconditionally the principal sum of $100,000. The bankrupt has made no application to amend the schedule so as to include this property, and does not offer to surrender it to the trustee as an asset of the estate. The opposition to the discharge is based upon the foregoing facts; the argument being that a discharge should be refused, because section 14 of the bankrupt act requires a refusal if the applicant has committed an offense punishable by imprisonment under section 29, and because such an offense has been committed by the present applicant, namely, the crime described in section 29b, par. 1, of 'having knowingly and fraudulently concealed, while a bankrupt, * * * from his trustee any of the property belonging to his estate in bankruptcy.'

The referee before whom the bankrupt was examined, upon the hearing of these exceptions, did not decide the questions now urged upon the court, namely, whether the estate acquired by the bankrupt under his father's will was...