Woolley v. Schrader

Citations

• 116 Ill. 29

Syllabus

<p>1. Will—election—as to accepting a part, and rejecting the residue. A devisee, claiming under a will, must accept its provisions as a whole, or not at all. While seeking to enforce provisions favorable to him, he will not be allowed to question other provisions which are against his interests. In such case he is put to his election whether he will take under the will or not.</p> <p>2. Same—effect of a devise as giving a partial interest in land, or the entire estate therein—as affecting the question of making an election by one of the devisees holding a residuary interest in thesame land. Where a testator has a limited interest in land devised, and a devisee under the will has the remaining interest, and the testator devises the land to another than the one holding such remainder, it depends upon the intention of the testator to devise the whole interest or simply to give his own, whether the devisee having the residuary interest shall be put to his election to give up his interest and take under the will, or retain his interest and repudiate the will; and such intention must be gathered from the whole will, viewed in the light of the circumstances surrounding the testator at the time of making the will.</p> <p>3. In this case, a father advancing money in payment of land bought by his son, took the title in his own name as a security for the payment of the sum so advanced. The son took possession and made improvements on the land, worth $800, occupied the same until his father’s death, and paid him back the greater part of the money so advanced. The father, in his will, directed that this and three other tracts should be equally divided between his four children, subject to the limitation that the first named son should be repaid the value of the improvements made by him: Held, that the testator intended to devise the entire interest in the tract bought by his son, and that the son, by ratifying the will and claiming under it, was .estopped from claiming the equi