Maginn's Estate

Citations

• 278 Pa. 89
• 122 A. 264
• 30 A.L.R. 418
• 1923 Pa. LEXIS 477

Syllabus

<p>Wills — Probate—Signature at end — Acts of April 8, 1888, P. L. 81f9, and June 7, 1917, P. L. l¡-08 — Loose sheets of paper — Internal sense — Buies of construction — Presumption.</p> <p>1. In interpreting a statute requiring the observance of certain forms in the making of a -will, the courts rigidly oppose any exception tending to weaken the basic principle underlying the law, the chief purpose of which is to see that the testator’s wishes are observed.</p> <p>2. It has always been the policy of the law to sustain a will if it is legally possible to do so, but the legislative barriers, protecting a man’s property after death, are not to be broken down, even if a situation may be presented apparently meritorious.</p> <p>3. A will may be written on several detached or loose sheets of paper, but to constitute such papers a will, they must be connected by their internal sense.</p> <p>4. While a will need not be signed at the physical or spatial end, and pages need not follow in numerical order, there must be the sequence of pages or paragraphs which relates to its logical and internal sense, and the signature must be placed at the sequential end; and this end must not permit the substitution or interpolation of pages in advance unless they are connected as indicated.</p> <p>5. Proof of signature alone is not sufficient to establish a will which consists of a number or collection of loose leaves, or leaves insecurely fastened together.</p> <p>6. The presumption in such case is that unattached or unsigned loose sheets, not connected by their internal sense to other pages of the will, were written after the signature of the testator.</p> <p>7. A will is not signed at the end thereof as required by the Act of April 8, 1833, P. L. 249, now the Act of June 7, 1917, P. L. 403, where unattested, unattached, loose sheets, disposing of a part of the estate, are presumed to follow testator’s signature.</p> <p>8. Several various sized, unnumbered, detachable typewritten pages,