Richey's Estate

Citations

• 251 Pa. 324
• 96 A. 748
• 1916 Pa. LEXIS 469

Syllabus

<p>Decadents’ estates — Wills—Life estates — Power to consume— Maintenance and support — Allowance.</p> <p>1. Where a person has two funds to draw upon for living expenses, one of his own individual estate, and the other from the estate of another in which he has a life interest, with power to consume, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, there is a presumption that he would expend the latter before drawing upon the former.</p> <p>2. A testator devised a life interest in his property to his wife with power to consume “so much of the principal as she may find necessary for her comfortable maintenance and support,” appointed her executrix with authority to sell his real estate, and gave the remainder to collateral relatives. The wife sold the real estate, paid certain debts and charges and made certain investments. Thirty-seven years thereafter she died and her executor filed her account as executrix of her husband’s estate, wherein he charged himself with certain sums which came into decedent’s hands from the sale of real estate, and claimed credit for a lump sum expended in his decedent’s lifetime for maintenance and support, embracing living expenses, doctors’ bills, medicine, help, washing, etc. The court admitted evidence to show the position in life occupied by the wife, the style and manner in which she maintained herself, and concluded that she must have spent, for her comfortable maintenance and support, in addition to her own small income, during the years following her husband’s death, at least the amount for which credit was claimed, and dismissed exceptions to the adjudication, of the auditing judge. Held, no error.</p> <p>3. In such case, it was error to allow two items claiming credit for the funeral expenses of the wife and for placing a stone over her grave, in the absence of anything in the will of her husband authorizing an expenditure from the proceeds of his estate for such purposes.</p>