269 Pa. 257 | Pa. | 1920
The plaintiff, the widow of Alfred E. Benkart, elected to take against his will, and filed a bill in the court below to have declared invalid, as against her, a trust which he created, in writing, on April 16, 1914, the trustee named being the Commonwealth Trust Company. The beneficiaries named were the settlor’s son and his brothers and sisters, should the son die before him. The property, all personal, mentioned in the trust consisted of three policies of insurance on the life of the settlor, payable at his death and aggregating $10,000. The policies were delivered to the trustee cotemporaneously with the creation of the trust, and thereafter, at various times prior to June 5, 1918 — the date of testator’s death — he deposited with the trustee other personal property, amounting to $20,000 and upwards, subject to the same conditions.
In dismissing the bill the learned chancellor below was convinced “that the trust agreement was not of a testamentary character, was delivered in good faith by the settlor, accompanied by an actual and unequivocal delivery of the possession and control of the assets involved; the fund established was at all times preserved intact and undisturbed by any withdrawals by the settlor, and he at no time sought to participate either in the enjoyment of the corpus of such fund or in the income derived from it; in short, it had all the indicia of similar trusts which the decisions show have been sustained in Pennsylvania.” Our examination of the record has led us to the same conclusion, and the bill was properly dismissed under Windolph v. Girard Trust Company, 245 Pa. 349. What was there said is controlling
Decree affirmed at appellant’s costs.