Magee v. O'Neill

Citations

• 19 S.C. 170
• 1883 S.C. LEXIS 69

Syllabus

<p>1. Whether a child has been reared in the faith of the Roman Catholic Church is an inquiry susceptible of judicial ascertainment.</p> <p>2. A testator bequeathed a fund to trustees, the income whereof was to be appropriated to the maintenance and education of his granddaughter, then an infant, “ provided she is educated in some Roman Catholic female seminary, or school, and is raised as a Roman Catholic, in the faith and communion of her deceased father,” the whole amount to be paid to her at her majority or marriage, freed from all trusts; but, if she “is not educated in a Catholic seminary or school, or raised as a Roman Catholic, in the faith of the Roman Catholic Church, then ” to testator’s daughters. Held, that the words here used created a conditional limitation.</p> <p>3. Neither the inadequacy of the interest to defray the expenses of an education at such a school, nor the infancy of the granddaughter, rendered the condition so impossible as to defeat the conditions imposed.</p> <p>4. A sum out of this fund having been offered by the trustees to the mother to maintain her daughter at a Roman Catholic school for some months, and declined, the condition cannot be disregarded upon the ground that it could not be performed, at least in part, however limited the mother’s own 'means may have been.</p> <p>5. The condition was not void, as being in contravention of public policy.</p> <p>6. The constitutional provisions which prohibit the establishment of any one denomination of Christians protect each and all in the peaceable enjoyment of its own mode of worship; instead of renouncing all religious denominations, they protect all.</p> <p>7. The granddaughter not having been educated in a Roman Catholic school, or raised as a Roman Catholic, in the faith of the Roman Catholic Church, the fund, at her majority, became vested in testator’s daughters, under the terms of his will.</p>