83 A. 210 | Conn. | 1912
This litigation has been before us in some of its aspects upon several former occasions, the last as reported in
Upon this question there is left no room for doubt upon the facts found. It is found that all the conditions *436
existed which were necessary to entitle Mrs. Emmons, upon the decease of her husband, to dower in all the real estate in this State of which he died possessed, and that her dower has never been assigned or set out pursuant to our statute. Under the well-established principles of our law she was, therefore, during the period when the income in question was collected, a tenant in common, to the extent of her dower interest, with the heirs of her husband, their grantees and the other owners of the property, and as such entitled to possession and to her proper share of its income in like manner as her cotenants. Calder v. Bull, 2 Root, 50, 52;Stedman v. Fortune,
The appellant's objections to the action of the court appear to rest upon the theory that the award to Mrs. Emmons involved an assignment of dower to her — a proceeding which is not within the province of the Superior Court. Such was by no means the case. The court had funds in its hands for distribution to those rightfully entitled to them. It was competent for it to inquire who these persons were, and the share belonging to each of them. That inquiry necessarily involved one as to the owners of the property which had produced the income, during the period of its production, and their several interests in it. Such inquiry the court made, as a preliminary to its distribution of the funds, and it did nothing more touching the title to the property. In so doing it was simply seeking to learn the state of the title as it was during the operations of the receiver, as furnishing the necessary basis for its order of distribution. It neither undertook to create a new interest, nor to change or make permanent an existing one. The contention that it either directly *437
attempted to do, or in effect did, what we said in our former opinion (
Mrs. Emmons, as a widow entitled to dower immediately upon her husband's death, became endowed, for her life, with one-third part of all the real estate of which her husband died possessed. We have already had occasion to observe that, under our law, she, as such dowress, became a tenant in common with the other heirs of her husband in all of his real estate. This estate vested in her immediately. It did not await upon an assignment or setting out. It was complete and perfect from the moment of the husband's death, and would remain unchanged except as an assignment or her own act might operate to do so. 1 Swift's Digest, s. p. 85;Stedman v. Fortune,
Complaint is made of the procedure adopted by the court for the determination of the rights of the parties in respect to the distribution, in that they were ordered to file statements of claim as in an interpleader. There can be no legal objection to the course pursued, if the court deemed it wise to direct it. It was entitled *438 to get at the pertinent facts, and the method adopted was one to which it could resort in the proper exercise of its discretion. No hard and fast rule prescribed any precise mode of procedure, or forbade the one chosen.
There is no error.
In this opinion the other judges concurred.