Stirk's Estate

Citations

• 232 Pa. 98
• 81 A. 187
• 1911 Pa. LEXIS 682

Syllabus

<p>Will — Charitable bequest — Death within thirty days — Alternative bequest — Fraud.</p> <p>1. Where a woman executes her will by which she gives her residuary estate, amounting to $340,000, to a charity, and immediately thereafter executes a codicil in which she states that as there may be a question of the legality of the bequest to the charity if she dies within thirty days from the date of her will she revokes the gift to the charity and gives her residuary estate to a trust company, such gift to the trust company cannot be sustained, where it appears that the trust company in question was a stranger to testatrix, that she was not a stockholder therein nor a depositor, that the will and codicil were prepared by an assistant trust officer of the company, that the codicil was prepared with the name of the residuary legatee left blank, that when the scrivener asked the testatrix to whom she wished her residuary estate to go in case of her death within thirty days, she said: “Give that to tbe company,” naming the trust company, and that both the testatrix and the scrivener must have intended, without openly stating it, that the gift to the trust company was simply to meet the requirements of the law and carry the bequest to the charities designated in the will.</p> <p>2. In such a case the action of the scrivener constituted a constructive fraud which would prevent the trust company from reaping a benefit from it, although the company did not in any way participate in the fraud.</p> <p>3. No person can claim an interest under a fraud committed by another. However innocent the party may be, if the original transaction is tainted with fraud, that taint runs through the derivative interest, and prevents any party claiming under it.</p>