Woltemate's Appeal

• Decision Date: 11 February 1878
• Citation: 86 Pa. 219
• Parties: Woltemate's Appeal. Ditsche's Estate.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

86 Pa. 219

Woltemate's Appeal. Ditsche's Estate.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

February 5, 1878.

February 11, 1878.

February 5th 1878.

Before AGNEW, C. J., SHARSWOOD, MERCUR, GORDON, PAXSON, WOODWARD and TRUNKEY, JJ.

Appeal from the Orphans' Court of Philadelphia county: Of January Term 1875, No. 220.

Appeal of Rosalie Woltemate, from the decree of the court confirming the report of the auditor upon the account of the administratrix of Xavier Ditsche, deceased.

W. Wynne Wister, Jr., and Henry M. Phillips, for appellant.— The third section of the Act of 1855 provides: "Illegitimate children shall take and be known by the name of their mother. And they and their mother shall respectively have capacity to take or inherit from each other personal estate, as next of kin, and real estate as heirs in fee simple; and as respects said real or personal estate, so taken and inherited, to transmit the same according to the intestate laws of this state." The appellant was within the spirit and the language of this act. The words, "and they and their mother shall respectively have capacity to take and inherit from each other," create between the illegitimate children of the same mother a capacity to take and inherit from each other. They shall respectively take from each other, means, each one from each.

B. F. Fisher and George W. Thorne, for appellee.—The intention of the act is that illegitimate children as a class, and their mothers as a class, should have the capacity to inherit, the one class from the other; but it did not create such a capacity between the children, one to another. The construction of the act, in Opdyke's Appeal, 13 Wright 373, Grubb's Appeal, 8 P. F. Smith 55, and Steckel's Appeal, 14 Id. 493, sustains this construction.

The judgment of the Supreme Court was entered, February 11th 1878, PER CURIAM.

The interpretation heretofore given to the Act of April 27th 1855, relating to illegitimates, is, that the inheritance of estates is confined to the mother and the illegitimate child, but extends from either to the other: Opdyke's Appeal, 13 Wright 373; Grubb's Appeal, 8 P. F. Smith 55; Steckel's Appeal, 14 Id. 493. This is in accordance with the precise language of the act, to wit: "And they (illegitimate children) and their mothers shall respectively have capacity to take or inherit from each other." This has been held to be the extent to which the legislature opened the door to illegitimates. As the mother of both the brother and sis...