In re Wilbor
| Decision Date | 08 June 1897 |
| Citation | 20 R.I. 126,37 A. 634 |
| Parties | In re WILBOR et al. |
| Court | Rhode Island Supreme Court |
Opinion on the construction of three wills, on the application of Maria H. Wilbor and others.
Warren R. Perce and Daniel W. Pink, for parties in interest.
This is a case stated for an opinion of the court, as follows: Three sisters, Charlotte Wilbor, Martha T. Wilbor, and Eliza Ann Wilbor, late of Newport, deceased, all perished in the same calamity,— the burning of their house in Newport. They left instruments in writing, purporting to be their last wills and testaments, which have been duly admitted to probate. By these wills each testatrix gave and devised all her real and personal estate to her two sisters, or to either 0? the survivors, and to their heirs and assigns forever, and then, having first directed that, after the decease of the last sister, the necessary debts should be paid, proceeded to give to her two nieces, Emily N. Wilbor and Maria H. Wilbor, $500 each, and to Thomas W. Smith $200. The legatee Emily N. Wilbor died before the testatrices. The only heirs at law of the testatrices are Abbie R. Richards, Ann Elizabeth Clarke, Mary H. Adams, Sarah T. Bliven, and Maria H. Wilbor. Upon these facts, the questions propounded are: (1) What is the amount of the legacies to which Maria H. Wilbor and Thomas W. Smith are respectively entitled under the wills? (2) What portion of the estate of the testatrices passed to their heirs at law? As all three of the testatrices lost their lives in the same disaster, and no fact or circumstance appears from which it can be inferred that either survived the others, the question of survivorship must be regarded as unascertainable, and hence the rights of succession to their estates are to be determined as if death occurred to all at the same moment. Underwood v. Wing, 19 Beav. 459, 4 De Gex, M. & G. 633; Wing v. Angrave, 8 H. L. Cas. 183; Wollaston v. Berkeley, 2 Ch. Div. 213; In re Wainwright, 1 Swab. & T. 257; Scrutton v. PattiUo, L. R. 19 Eq. 369; Coye v. Leach, 8 Mete. (Mass.) 371; Johnson v. Merithew, 80 Me. Ill, 13 Atl. 132; Newell v. Nichols, 12 Hun, 604; Id., 75 N. Y. 78; In re Hall, 9 Cent. Law J. 381; Russell v. Hallett, 23 Kan. 276; Estate of Ehle, 73 Wis. 445, 41 N. W. 627; 24 Am. & Eng. Enc. Law, 1027-1032. If all three of the testa trices are to be regarded as having died at the same moment, it follows that the bequest and devise in each of their wills to the two sisters, or either of...
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Watkins v. Home Life & Accident Insurance Company
... ... Christian Home v. French, 187 U.S. 401, 47 ... L.Ed. 233, 23 S.Ct. 184; Greeleaf on Evidence (16 Ed.), vol ... 1, sec. 30, p. 126; Lawson's Law of Presumptive Evidence, ... p. 298; United States Casualty Co. v. Kacer ... (Mo.), 169 Mo. 301, 92 Am. St. Rep. 641; Re Maria H ... Wilbor (R.I.), 20 R.I. 126, 37 A. 634, 51 L.R.A. 863, ... and note; and St. John v. Andrews Institute for ... Girls (N. Y.), 191 N.Y. 254, 83 N.E. 981, 14 Ann. Cas ... The ... rule that there is no presumption of survivorship in a common ... disaster applies where the insured and ... ...
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