Estate of Stambaugh

Citations

• 135 Pa. 585
• 19 A. 1058
• 1890 Pa. LEXIS 1224

Syllabus

<p>1. A trust to invest money, eolleet the interest and pay it over to a cestui que trust (luring lile, and at his death to pay the principal to another, is an active trust and vests the legal title to the fund in the trasteo, during the life of the cestui que trust.</p> <p>2. It is not essential, to make such a trust active, that the investment of the principal be authorized in express terms; there being a direction to the trustee to pay over the interest, the duty to invest arises by necessary implication from such direction.</p> <p>(a) A testator directed that a certain part of his estate, less the debts due to him from his son Moses, should be held for Moses by a trustee, who should pay to Moses the yearly income thereof, after deducting taxes and necessary expenses, the principal to be paid to the heirs of Moses at his death.</p> <p>3. It being manifest that the testator intended to sever the product from the fund producing it, and that he used the word heirs in Uie sense of children, and the trust created by him being an active one, the rule in Shelley’s Case had no application.</p> <p>4. The intent of the testator, ascertained from the will in the light of proof that Moses became insolvent a few months before the writing of the will, was to create a spendthrift trust, and this intent is not to be set aside because not clearly expressed by the scrivener, at least as between the trustee and the cestui que trust.</p> <p>5. It is true, that the intent of the testator must be ascertained from the face of his will; but the meaning of the will must be interpreted in the light of all the circumstances by which the testator was surrounded, when he made it, and by which he was probably influenced.</p> <p>6. The trustee in a spendthrift trust, created for the protection of a life tenant of personalty, to whose heirs the principal was bequeathed in remainder, will not be protected by releases from the life-tenant and all his children, in paying over the principal without