Estate of Cawley

Citations

• 136 Pa. 628
• 20 A. 567
• 1890 Pa. LEXIS 1056

Syllabus

<p>1. Although a contract and awill are essentially unlike, they may be, and sometimes are combined so as to give a testamentary character to what purports to be awill, or to convert awill into an irrevocable agreement. Whether a given writing is a will or a contract, must be determined from the character of its contents, rather than from its title or formal words.</p> <p>2. If two or more persons own property in common, there is no objection, on principle, to their joining in a testamentary disposition of it, and this might be called a joint will. Whether, after the death of one or more of the makers, the surviving maker may revoke such a will, as to his title or share of the property devised, not decided.</p> <p>(a) Brother and sister joined in executing a paper in the following form: “ I, B. C., should I be the first to die, and I, M. C., should I be the first to die, give, devise and bequeath, and to the survivor of either of us,” all the estate of the decedent, for life, with remainder over. Throughout the paper, except in the clause appointing an executor, the operative words were in the singular number:</p> <p>3. The instrument was not a contract, in form or effect; nor, there being no joint property or joint devise, was it a joint will. It was properly a double will, and must be construed and treated as the separate will of each maker, as fully as though a separate copy had been executed by each. Wherefore, after the death of one, it was revocable by the other as to his own property.</p>