Mebus's Estate

Citations

• 273 Pa. 505
• 117 A. 340
• 1922 Pa. LEXIS 606

Syllabus

<p>Wills — Construction—Life estate — Remainders—Issue—Rule in Shelley’s Case.</p> <p>1. The rule of construction whereby a devise over, in the event of the death of the first taker, is generally understood to mean death occurring in the lifetime of the testator applies only when the will itself shows no other period to which the words, on a proper interpretation, may be referred.</p> <p>2. The rule is never applied where the first takers referred to are treated as living at the period subsequent to the death of the testator.</p> <p>3. Where a testator makes limitations over to survivors after the death without issue of the first taker, and names as remainder-men persons in being, a strong presumption is raised that an indefinite failure of issue is not contemplated; and this is strengthened when the limitation over is of but a life estate.</p> <p>4. If it appears, either by expression or clear implication, that by the word “issue” testator meant issue living at a particular period, as at the death of the first taker, and not the whole line of succession, it must necessarily be construed as a word of purchase, and the rule in Shelley’s Case can have no application.</p> <p>5. Where testatrix devises her real estate in separate parcels to her three children respectively for life “only,” with power to make loans on it even to exhaustion, remainder to “issue” if any, and if none to survivors, and if all should die without issue, “then so much of my estate as may then remain to sisters of testatrix,” naming them, the children take a life estate only in the real estate respectively devised to them, and if they all survive the testatrix and die without issue, the sisters of the testatrix take such real estate.</p>