McFadden's Estate

224 Pa. 443 | Pa. | 1909

Opinion by

Mr. Justice Elkin,

The question to be determined here is whether the royalties required to be paid under the coal mining lease executed by virtue of the authority and decree of the orphans’ court of Cambria county in 1908, shall be deemed income payable to the widow under the terms of the will, or shall they pass into the residuary estate as principal to be invested by the trustee, the income only of the invested sum to be paid the widow. There is no difficulty as to the application of the underlying principles upon which the decision of this case rests. If the coal lands described in the lease had been sold under a decree of court at a fixed price or consideration, there can be no question but that the thing sold would be under these circumstances part of the corpus of the estate, and the amount received in payment of the thing sold would be principal. Nor is it open to doubt, under the settled rule of our cases, that a lease to mine all the coal underlying a tract of land described in the conveyance upon the payment of certain specified royalties, amounts to and is the equivalent of a sale of the coal in place. The right to mine the coal to exhaustion is the equivalent of a grant of all the coal, and the payment for the coal mined at a certain rate per ton is the consideration price paid. If there was nothing else in the case there could be only one answer to the question here raised, and that answer is, that the royalties represent the purchase price and should be treated as principal. It is contended, however, and the learned orphans’ court below took this view of the question, that the intention of the testator was to give these royalties as income to his wife, or if the testator did not so provide, the widow as tenant for life took the royalties as income under the common-law rule followed in our state which gives the life tenant the right to mine opened mines to exhaustion without being chargeable with waste and to enjoy the profits arising therefrom. We cannot agree that the intention of the testator shown by the residuary clause or from the four comers of the will justifies such a conclusion. The wife was given the income of the corpus of the residuary estate, the title to which passed under the terms of the will to the trustee. The coal lands in question were part of the corpus of the trust estate. The will did not provide for a sale or conversion of these lands. There were no open mines on the particular lands described in the lease above referred to. Under these circumstances, how can it be said that the testator intended his wife to take as income what he held as corpus and for the sale or conversion of which he made no provision? Clearly, the intention of the testator to give to his wife as income royalties not contracted for at the time of his death, and which were not then contemplated or provided for, cannot be gathered from the terms of the will itself, nor from any other source.

The settled rule that it is not waste about which remainder-men can complain for a life tenant to work an open mine to exhaustion has no application to the facts of the case at bar. It is very doubtful whether the widow here is a life tenant within the meaning of the rule. The common-law rule rested on a very different foundation. It had its origin in a case where the testator had devised a tract of land, limited in area, on which was an open mine, to one for life, and then- over to others. The question arose whether it was waste for the life tenant under these circumstances to mine, use and sell coal from a mine opened in the lifetime of testator. It was held not to be waste and that the life tenant had the right to pursue the mine even to exhaustion. This rule found favor in our earlier cases and has become a rule of property in Pennsylvania. There is no disposition to weaken or destroy it and it must be considered as settled law when the facts of a case justify its application. The rule, however, has its limitations, and must not be unduly and unreasonably extended. As, for instance, suppose the testator in the present case was possessed at the time of his death of a homestead farm containing 200 acres upon which there was an open mine for country use, and adjacent to the homestead he owned 10,000 acres of undeveloped mineral lands, could it be seriously contended that because the life tenant could work the open mine on the homestead to exhaustion, that this included the right to lease upon royalty the coal underlying the 10,000 acres of mineral lands and to receive the consideration paid in royalties to the exclusion of the remainder-men. No reasonable interpretation of the rule can make it applicable to such a state of facts. Such a situation was not contemplated when the rule was first announced and it would do violence to the spirit and purpose of it to require its application under such circumstances. In the present case there was an outstanding lease for a limited number of acres belonging to the testator at the time of his death upon which there was a mining operation. There were at least two openings on this property, but these lands were segregated from the other lands of the testator by lease itself, and there can be no reason in law or equity why the rule should be extended beyond the boundaries fixed by the testator himself. We hold, therefore, that there was no open mine in the lifetime of the testator on the lands included in the lease of 1908 and the rule as to the rights of a life tenant does not apply. The royalties received, or to be received, under the terms of this lease are principal and not income and should be so regarded and treated.

Decree reversed and record remitted with instructions to make the distribution in accordance with the views herein stated. Costs to be paid out of the trust estate.