Carson v. Fuhs

Citations

• 131 Pa. 256
• 18 A. 1017
• 1890 Pa. LEXIS 1105

Syllabus

<p>[To be reported-!</p> <p>(a) Husband and wife conveyed certain real estate of the husband to a trustee, for the use of said wife “ during her natural life, and at her decease then to her heirs in fee, share and share alike, and in the meantime to allow and permit her to receive for her own use the rents, issues thereof, subject to the taxes and costs of executing this said trust.”</p> <p>1. Even if this deed had created a valid trust, such as to prevent the legal estate from vesting in the wife and to withhold from her the power of alienation, she would have had under'it an equitable estate in fee, entitling her husband upon her death, to possession as tenant by curtesy; wherefore, during his life her heirs could not recover the land from one to whom she and her husband conveyed ft before her death.</p> <p>2. But the trust specified in the deed was a passive one merely; the trustee having no active duties to perform, and there appearing no intention to create a separate use trust, and no purpose to be subserved in keeping the declared trust alive, the statute of uses executed it and the wife became seised, under the rule in Shelley’s Case, of a legal estate in fee, with power to alien the same.*</p>