Estate of Lennig

Citations

• 182 Pa. 485
• 38 A. 466
• 1897 Pa. LEXIS 834

Syllabus

<p>Contract — Assignment of expectant interest — Consideration—Equity.</p> <p>A conveyance or assignment of something that does not belong to the grantor, and may never belong to him, is at law inoperative, and in equity must be founded upon a valuable, not merely a good, consideration.</p> <p>Decedents' estates — Assignment of interest under will — Consideration.</p> <p>An assignment of an expectant interest under a will, made without consideration, in the testator’s lifetime, cannot be enforced against the assignors after testator’s death.</p> <p>Testatrix made a will by which she bequeathed her whole estate to a daughter and two granddaughters. Before testatrix died the three beneficiaries under the will signed a paper by which they agreed that one third of the estate should be divided amongst the children of a son of testatrix. All of the parties knew the contents of the will at the time the paper was signed. There was no controversy or dispute between them as to any claim of interest or title which the grantees had or might have in the estate of the testatrix, and the agreement was not based upon any valuable consideration. Held, (1) that the agreement could not be sustained as a family settlement; (2) that it could not be sustained as a gift, because the thing given had no existence; (3) that the fact that the grantees abstained from further efforts to obtain a codicil to the will was not a sufficient consideration to support the agreement as an equitable assignment.</p>