Fett's Estate

Citations

• 39 Pa. Super. 246
• 1909 Pa. Super. LEXIS 471

Syllabus

<p>Equitable assignment — Certificate of deposit — Husband and wife— Decedents’ estates — Banks and banking. ’</p> <p>1. An equitable assignment is an agreement in the nature of a declaration of trust, which a chancellor, though deaf to the prayer of a volunteer, never hesitates to execute when it has been made on valuable, or even good consideration. An assignment of a chose in action or- of a fund need not be by any particular form of words or particular form of instrument.</p> <p>2. A trust company issued a certificate of deposit payable one year after date, bearing interest, in which it was recited that the depositor had deposited a stated sum of money, and that “the above deposit is not subject to check, and is transferable only on the books of the company on the return of this certificate.” The depositor owed his wife the exact sum stated in the certificate, being the proceeds of land which he had sold for her. After the depositor’s death, his widow, who was one of his executors, presented the certificate on the day it became due, and received a new certificate in which it was recited that she, one of the executors of the decedent, had deposited the same sum of money as the amount of the old certificate, payable one year afterwards to herself on return of the certificate. She indorsed the certificate in her own name as one of the executors. In each of the five succeeding years she returned the certificate delivered to her in the preceding year, and received a new one in the same form. On the certificates after the first one, she simply indorsed them with her own name, excepting in one instance. A witness-testified that at the time the old certificate was surrendered, the widow directed the officer of the trust company “to fix it in her name,” and gave to him as a reason, “so that she could get it.” This witness was an executor of the widow, and did not include the last certificate in the inventory of her estate. Held (1), that the widow had a right, as against