Blick v. Cockins

Citations

• 234 Pa. 261
• 83 A. 196
• 1912 Pa. LEXIS 640

Syllabus

<p>Trusts and trustees — Trusts ex maleficio — Fraud—Equity— Equity practice — Chancellor’s findings — Weight of testimony— Decree — Appeals. •</p> <p>1. Where a testator has been induced to make a devise by the promise of the devisee that it should be applied to the benefit of another, a trust is thereby created that may be established by parol evidence, and this is not contrary to the Statute of Wills nor within the Statute of Frauds and Perjuries. It is the element of fraud appearing in the case that gives the court jurisdiction to inquire into it, not with a view of enforcing a parol trust, but to relieve against the fraud by raising a constructive trust.</p> <p>2. In a proceeding by bill in equity to have a trust ex maleficio declared in the defendant with respect to property bequeathed and devised to him by his wife, the fraud alleged being that the defendant had procured his wife to execute the will by giving her verbal assurance that he would hold the property devised to him absolutely only during his life, and would see to it that the property so obtained should be divided between the brother and sister of testatrix, the complainants in the bill, equally upon his death, and that having so obtained the property he had repudiated the obligation of his promise and proposed to hold the property as his own absolutely, where the chancellor finds as a fact the credibility of three witnesses, of whom two, the complainants in the ease, testify to explicit admissions by the defendant, one that the will was executed giving to defendant absolutely the entire estate on the strength of the promise made by him to his wife that he would see that the estate would, at his death, go to her brother and sister, and the other that the absoluteness of the gift to him was only apparent, that it was only so written that he might pass it to complainants at his death, and the third, a reputable lawyer, testifies that on the occasion of the probate of the will, the defendant stated th