147 A. 139 | Conn. | 1929
This action is brought by the administrator upon the estate of Grace D. Dodd against The Hartford-Connecticut Trust Company, named trustee in a certain instrument purporting to be a trust agreement, executed and delivered by her to it, and also against the administrator of the estate of one of the *24 beneficiaries named in that instrument and against a living beneficiary, claiming that the instrument be declared null and void, and that the defendant Trust Company account for the property received under it and for damages. In the fourth count of the complaint it was alleged that the property transferred to the Trust Company was not within the term "securities" as used in the instrument and that the Trust Company had taken and held it as agent and servant of Mrs. Dodd and had refused to surrender it to the plaintiff on demand. A fifth count was added by amendment, in which it was alleged that the agreement was testamentary in character and that, not having been executed in accordance with the provisions of the statute governing the execution of wills, it was invalid and void. By agreement of counsel and in accordance with the provisions of ยง 5636 of the General Statutes, the trial court heard and determined the issues arising under the fourth and fifth counts before the trial of certain issues raised by the other counts. From its decision, upholding the instrument as creating a valid trust of the property transferred to the Trust Company, the plaintiff has appealed.
On October 7th, 1921, Mrs. Dodd's husband committed suicide, leaving a will in which the defendant Trust Company was named executor. Mrs. Dodd was at the time disabled by paralysis so that she could only speak a few words at a time and could not write with her right hand. One of the trust officers of the Trust Company called upon her and a power of attorney was executed by her to it. When Mr. Dodd's safe deposit box was opened, most of Mrs. Dodd's property was found in it, and the Trust Company, under the power of attorney, took possession of it, gave Mrs. Dodd a receipt, and thereafter, until November, 1921, held it as her agent. Mrs. Dodd expressed a wish to *25 make some provision with reference to her property so that it would not go to her relatives. As a result, the instrument in question, a copy of which is printed in the footnote,* was drawn up by the officer of the Trust *26 Company and executed by her, she signing it with her left hand, which she had learned to use. Thereafter *27 the Trust Company transferred all the property referred to in the schedule annexed to it from an account in which it had carried them as attorney to a trustee account, caused all the certificates of stock to be transferred into its name as trustee, and withdrew and invested the various savings accounts except one, Mrs. Dodd signing the necessary papers to accomplish these changes. Thereafter the Trust Company held the property as a trust fund, at times changed the investments without consulting her, paid her bills and from time to time sent her small sums of money. Within a month of the execution of the instrument and at other times Mrs. Dodd said that she had given her money to the Trust Company.
Whatever the natural or technical meaning of the word "securities" the instrument before us makes it perfectly certain that it was here used to include the property, including her savings bank accounts transferred to the Trust Company; for the instrument recites the desire of Mrs. Dodd to transfer and the actual transfer of the "securities set forth" in the schedule which is annexed to it, and in that schedule the property is listed in detail. No question is made that there was a sufficient transfer of the property included in the instrument to the Trust Company to sustain the trust if one was validly created. By the terms of the instrument Mrs. Dodd divested herself of the legal title to the property referred to in it and the schedule and vested that title in the Trust Company, with full power to manage and control it, reserving only to herself the net income for her life, a right to such part of the principal as the trustee might deem necessary for her maintenance, comfort and support, and a power to revoke the trust. She did not thereafter have such control over the use and management of the property that the Trust Company is to be deemed merely her *28
agent. Lyle v. Burke,
The invalidity of the agreement, if it is invalid, must be because it was in fact a testamentary disposition of the property, not executed as required by our statute of wills. That there may be a valid trust where property is transferred to a trustee with a reservation of a life use to the settlor and at his death upon a further trust for other beneficiaries or to pay over to designated persons does not admit of doubt. Candee
v. Connecticut Savings Bank,
As substantiating his claim that the instrument before us was really testamentary in its nature, the plaintiff rests largely upon the provision in the trust agreement which gave to Mrs. Dodd the power to revoke the trust and resume possession of the property at any time by giving written notice to the Trust Company. He contends that the existence of this power prevented any vesting of an interest in those who were to receive a gift at the death of Mrs. Dodd and claims that consequently no such interest existed until her death. He cities a number of cases where, in trusts of the general nature of the one before us, a right of revocation was held to exist in the settlor although not expressly reserved. In several of these cases the instrument provided that at the death of the settlor the property *30
should be distributed in accordance with the terms of his will or in default thereof to his heirs at law or next of kin, and these cases were decided upon the theory that such provisions do not establish gifts to take effect at the death of the settlor, but are mere statements by way of further limitation of the trustee's estate or, to put it another way, are merely a recognition of the disposition of the property which would follow the termination of the trust by the death of the settlor.Hoskin v. Long Island Loan Trust Co.,
We have then an instrument under the terms of which the property in question was transferred to a trustee and which created an immediately enjoyable life estate in the settlor and a present vested interest *32
in those named to take at her death, defeasible only in the event that she exercised a reserved power of revocation. With a striking unanimity of opinion, such trusts have been held valid. Nichols v. Emery,
The plaintiff contends that the instrument, while nominally creating a trust, shows upon its face that it was intended, at least as regards the provision for distribution at the death of Mrs. Dodd, merely as a testamentary provision. If that is so, it could not be sustained. Main's Appeal,
The two cases which perhaps go as far as any to support the claims of the plaintiff are McEvoy v. BostonFive Cents Savings Banks, supra, and Russell v.Webster,
The appeal claims error in certain rulings on evidence, but these are not pressed in argument and they are not so stated in the finding that we could consider them; in one paragraph numerous rulings are stated and the reason of appeal addressed to it is general;Doolan v. Heiser,
There is no error.
In this opinion the other judges concurred.