Manderson v. Lukens

• Decision Date: 01 March 1854
• Citation: 23 Pa. 31
• Parties: Manderson versus Lukens.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

23 Pa. 31

Manderson versus Lukens.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

ERROR to the District Court, Philadelphia.

Campbell, for plaintiffs in error.

Harding, for defendant.

The opinion of the Court was delivered by LOWRIE, J.

The plaintiffs' right of action depends upon the will of John C. Browne. He devised all his real estate to his wife during her life or widowhood, and "whenever her death or marriage should take place," it was to be equally divided among his children "which may be then alive, or who may have left legitimate heirs." Two of the children died intestate and without issue, and then the widow sold her interest to her only remaining son Peter, who afterwards died leaving issue, his mother being then still alive. If Peter thus acquired a full title, then the plaintiffs claiming under him have a good one; and it appears that there is no one to dispute it except the children of Peter. The defendant, having made a contract of purchase from the plaintiffs, refused to perform it, fearing that a claim by Peter's children would be available.

Analyze the claim in question, and what have we? A devise to the testator's children, that is, his heirs, and impliedly to their heirs, after the death of his widow. In other words, a devise of a life estate, with remainder to his heirs at law, which is necessarily a vested remainder, or rather a reversion. And Peter, having become the heir of the two who died, takes the whole.

It is argued that the remainder is contingent until the death of the widow. Suppose it so, if you can. Then the estate, until then vested under the will, would vest in the children themselves as an inheritance, and thus they would have both the vested and the contingent estates, that is, the whole estate, and both would descend in the same way to their heirs, which is an absolute estate.

But lest this may be doubted as a rather summary solution of the case, we shall treat it more in detail and under the guidance of other principles.

We cannot treat the expression "legitimate heirs" as meaning "issue" in the technical sense; for we are sure that the testator had no thought of creating an estate tail. Nor can we substitute the word "children" in the English sense, which is never equivalent to "heirs," if by so doing we should give to the first takers only a life estate, with an executory devise to their unborn children; for nothing was further from the intention of the testator than such an artificial devise as this. Besides, the...