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Estates and Trusts

Michigan Law Review

1936

Legacies

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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Effect Of Impossibility Upon Conditions In Wills, Lewis M. Simes May 1936

The Effect Of Impossibility Upon Conditions In Wills, Lewis M. Simes

Michigan Law Review

Writers may discourse upon the danger of construing trees to mean raspberry bushes or cabbages, but the fact remains that written instruments are interpreted with the aid of something more than a dictionary. Circumstances existing both at the time the document is executed and at a subsequent period are considered in determining what it means. This statement applies to conditions as well as to other parts of a written instrument. Nor should we be surprised to find that impossibility of performance may modify legal consequences.


Executors And Administrators-Executor's ''Right Of Retainer" Of Distributive Share Of Estate Where Distributee Is Indebted To Decedent Jan 1936

Executors And Administrators-Executor's ''Right Of Retainer" Of Distributive Share Of Estate Where Distributee Is Indebted To Decedent

Michigan Law Review

A question little noticed by legal writers, but of utmost importance in the administration and distribution of decedents' estates, is the universally recognized right of executors and administrators of the estates to retain a distributive share as satisfaction in whole or in part for a debt due from the distributee to the estate of the decedent. It should be remarked at the outset that the term "retainer" as here used is itself a misnomer; properly speaking, that term refers to the right of an executor, who is himself a creditor of the estate, to retain from its funds in his …