30 Pa. 501 | Pa. | 1858
The opinion of the court was delivered by
— It is unnecessary to measure with accuracy the husband’s interest under this deed. Starting from the point to which the English decisions have brought the law, that a husband may have curtesy of a trust estate, of such a nature that the legal estate, if executed, would have entitled him to curtesy, or adopting the phraseology of our Pennsylvania cases, that the husband is tenant by the curtesy wherever the wife during the coverture is in possession of an equitable estate of inheritance, and conceding that the proviso of the 10th section of the Act of 11th April 1848 means that, if a husband survives a wife who dies intestate seised of an estate of inheritance, he shall be entitled to enjoy that estate during life as a tenant by the curtesy consummate at common law, the question arises, whether the estate of the husband, as tenant for life under the deed to the plaintiff, became vested in the defendant by the sheriff’s sale. This involves the construction of the Act of 24th January 1849. The Act of 13th October 1840 had provided for the sequestration of estates for life: 3 Barr 275; 1 Harris 488. The third section of the subsequent act authorizes a sale under the ordinary writ, where a sequestrator has not been
Judgment affirmed.