Succession of Langles

Citations

• 105 La. 39

Syllabus

<p>Syllabus.</p> <p>1. A mother and daughter, sole presumptive legal heirs of each other, by separate wills, bequeathed each to the other her whole estate, and having so willed, each contingently made another disposition of the same. The declared contingency in each case was the death of the instituted heir prior to that of the particular testatrix. Mother and daughter perished in a shipwreck, under conditions such as to render it impossible by evidence to ascertain which of the two survived. Under such circumstances the presumptions of survivorship fixed by the Articles of the Civil Code apply. The mother being fifty-two years of age and the daughter thirty-five, the latter must be held to have been the survivor. There is no presumption of simultaneousness of death in Louisiana.</p> <p>2. Courts construe and do not make wills, and if an event has happened for . which a testator has not provided from not having foreseen it, although if he had foreseen it, there is a strong probability he would have provided for it in a particular way, his supposed wishes shall not prevail. Quod volu.it, non dixit. Courts have to give effect to the expressed not the conjectural, or probable intention of the testators.</p> <p>3. The provision in a will that the executor should expend a certain amount tor a tomb for the testatrix does not lapse because the body of the deceased could not be recovered and deposited in it — the word “tomb” has a sufficiently broad signification to be held to be a monument in memory of the dead — as such, it should be erected.</p> <p>On Application por Rehearing.</p> <p>Where two' persons are, by law, entitled to inherit from one another, the fact that they make wills in favor of each other does not deprive either of them of the benefit of the presumption as to survivorship, established by Articles 936 et seq. of the Civil Code.</p>