Law Commons^™

Substitutional Gifts To Classes, John R. Rood

Articles

In some recent cases we have fresh reminder of the futility of Sir William Grant's distinction between original and substitutional gifts, a rule over which courts have quarreled and disagreed ever since it was promulgated, and which never was applied to the exclusion of anyone without disappointing the wish of the testator. In speaking of this rule in Re Hickey, [1917], 1 Ch. D. 601, 604, Neville, J., says: "The alleged principle seems to be that the meaning of the word 'substitute' involves the idea of replacing one thing by another. One cannot 'substitute' something for nothing. The proposition appears …

The Disposition To Be Made Of Property The Subject Of A Power If The Power Is Not Exercised, John R. Rood

Articles

The object sought in this article is to collect and classify the cases in which the courts have passed on the question as to what shall be done with property over which a power of appointment has been given; when it finally turns out for some reason that the power has not been exercised. It is not the object to establish any particular thesis, but rather to ascertain how the adjudicated cases stand.

What Words Create A Power?, John R. Rood

Articles

As the right to sell may exist either as a result of ownership, or by virtue of a power without or independent of ownership, it is sometimes a question whether words indicating a right to sell, contained in an instrument granting an estate, are intended to give a power, or are merely descriptive of the rights incident to the estate given. When property is devised without any designation of the estate given, and the devise is followed by words indicating that the devisee is to have the right of absolute disposal in fee, or to sell in fee, it has …

Corporations And Express Trusts As Business Organizations, Horace Lafayette Wilgus

Articles

PRESIDENT BUTLER of Columbia University is reported to have said in an address before the New York Chamber of Commerce in 1911, that "the limited liability corporation is the greatest single discovery of modem times, whether you judge it by its social, by its ethical, by its industrial, or, in the long run--after we understand it and know how to use it,--by its political, effects." 1

How To Beat The Rule Against Perpetuities, John R. Rood

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Many people seem to think that the lawyer's problem is not so much to know what the law is as to know how to get all they want while obeying the law to the letter. In the case of perpetuities the history of nearly a thousand years of our law shows an almost unbroken series of disastrous failures of the best-laid schemes to violate the public policy of freedom of alienation.

Unenforceable Trusts And The Rule Against Perpetuities, George L. Clark

Articles

Bequests upon trust to use the income thereof each year in keeping a monument or grave in repair, or in saying masses,8 or in having a brass band to play at the testator's grave each year on the anniversary of the testator's death9 have been held invalid, and the reason given is that the gift is a "perpetuity"1 or is in "violation of the rule against perpetuities."11 What do the courts mean by calling such a gift a "perpetuity?" And in what way, if at all, could the bequest be so changed as to avoid the "rule against perpetuities" and …

The Public Policy Of Contracts To Will Future Acquired Property, Joseph H. Drake

Articles

The general subject of wills upon consideration seems to have given courts and jurists a good deal of trouble, not only in England and America, but also in the continental countries. The Code Napoleon appears in terms actually to prohibit the making of reciprocal or mutual wills in the same instrument.

The Cy-Pres Doctrine, Harry B. Hutchins

Articles

The CY-Pres Doctrine.-The court of chancery of New Jersey in the recent case of Brow et al. v. Condit et al. (Sept. 30, 1905), 61 Atl. Rep. 1055, refused to apply this doctrine under the following circumstances: The will of one Susan M. Corson, bearing date July 7, 1897, disposed of her residuary estate "to the Hospital Fund for Sick Seamen at Navy Yard, Brooklyn, New York, care of Mr. John M. Wood, chaplain." It appears that neither at the time of the making of the will nor at any time thereafter was there a fund in existence at or …

An Inroad Upon Fiduciary Integrity, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

It is a principle universally recognized throughout our system of law, that no person shall be permitted to occupy a position of trust and confidence who at the same time is clearly subject to influences hostile to a faithful performance of his trust. There is a rule as old as Christianity, and it has been incorporated into our law from the earliest times, that "no man shall serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to the one and despise the other." Fiduciary relations can rest upon no foundation but …

Testamentary Promises To Pay, Nathan Abbott

Articles

The New York Law Journal for May 23, 1892, contains a suggestive editorial headed "A Will or Not a Will," in which the writer says "Interesting questions are constantly arising in the classification of instruments which, although expressing wishes or intentions to be carried out after death, are open to criticism on the score of testamentary execution." As is intimated by the writer, the difficulty of placing an instrument in either the class of contracts or wills is considerably diminished if the statutory provisions as to execution of wills are elaborate. Where holographic wills are allowed, or wills of personal …

David Maynard Et Al V. Fractional School District, & C., Thomas M. Cooley

Articles

"A bequest to the members composing the School District by name, and to their successors in office, of moneys to be expended in the purchase of books for a district library -- thy being the officers designated by law to preform similar duties for the district -- is in effect a bequest to the district."

Lucy M. Maynard by her last will directed the residue of her estate be sold and the monies be placed at the disposal of the District Board of the Fractional School District in Milan and York, Michigan, and used for library supplies. "The validity of …