McCloskey v. McCloskey

Citations

• 205 Pa. 491
• 55 A. 180
• 1903 Pa. LEXIS 603

Syllabus

<p>Trusts and trustees — Will—Parol trust — Act of April 22, 1856, P. L. 532 —•Resulting trust.</p> <p>The mere broken promise of a trustee under a trust created by parol, who had agreed to carry it out, cannot, without more, be held sufficient to create a trust by implication within the exception of the Act of April 22, 1856,P. L. 532.</p> <p>Unkept promises, declarations or misrepresentations which will create trustees ex maleficio must be made before, or at the time the legal title is acquired, or the devise made. Nothing subsequently said by a grantee or devisee will turn an estate that had passed absolutely from the grantor or testator into a trust for others. The land of a grantor or testator, who alone can impress it with a trust, never passes from him so impressed unless the impress is in writing, or he is induced at the time of his conveyance or devise to make it by reliance upon the pledged faith of his grantee or devisee, subsequently broken, that his express wishes will be carried out.</p> <p>Where a testator executes a will by which he devises practically his whole estate, upon the death of his wife, to his three daughters and it does not appear that he was induced to do so by any promises, misrepresentations, artifice or fraud practiced upon him by his daughters at the time of the execution of the will, or prior thereto, an alleged promiso made by the daughters after the date of the will and in response to an alleged request on the part of the testator, that after the death of their mother they would hold two fifths of his estate in trust for their two brothers who were insolvent at the date of the will, will not be enforced by a court of equity. Such a trust being iu parol is in violation of the Act of April 22, 1856, P. L. 532, and cannot be proved; and as it is neither a trust ex maleficio, nor a resulting trust, it is not'within the exceptions of that act.</p>