Gray v. Corbit

Citations

• 4 Del. Ch. 135

Syllabus

<p>An interest in land or the profits of land to he transmissible to representatives, must be assignable, devisable, and subject to debts.</p> <p>Where the trust was created by will for the maintenance and support of a feeble-minded son, a limitation over to the issue of such son, if any, would be altogether too slender a ground to support the construction that the testator, in providing for the contingency of issue, contemplated the probable improvement in mental capacity of his son, and therefore intended to create a transmissible interest or estate in the subject-matter of the trust.</p> <p>The maxim “expressio unius, exclusio alterins” raises but a very inconclusive presumption of intent on the part of the testator, such as is always open to be explained by collateral facts, or to be rebutted by counter presumptions arising from the will.</p> <p>A trust for the general benefit of a person sai juris, which not being restricted to maintenance only, may so be used as to confer substantial advantages of ownership, will vest a transmissible interest in the cestui que trust. Where, however the trust is restricted to the maintenance and support of an imbecile person, incapable of managing his affairs, it will not vest any transmissible interest in the cestui que trust.</p> <p>The residuary clause directing the conversion into money of all the testator’s “ real and personal estate not hereinbefore devised or bequeathed,” to be distributed among his children in certain shares, amounts to an express exclusion of the residuary devisees from the surplus of rents accruing from the devised real estate. All interests in land, which are not disposed of by will, result to the heir at law. Rents and profits of land accumulated during a period prior to the talcing effect in possession of future limitations, pass to the heir at law by way of resulting trust.</p> <p>The doctrine of testamentary gifts by implication without direct words is well established, and is a necessary concess