11 Pa. 370 | Pa. | 1849
The opinion of this court was delivered by
The most harassing duty which devolves on the courts is the interpretation of wills, in which the testator has often no clear or distinct intention present to his own mind, or if he has, he lacks the power of expressing it. We are oflen compelled to draw light from that which is obscure, and give distinctiveness to that which is vague and glimmering.
In this casé, there was doubtless present to the testator’s mind, when making the devise in question, a general intent to give a fee to his brother William. He first directs that “ all his worldly substance and property shall be disposed of in the following manner.”
These words, and the like of them, are generally carried down into the corpus of the will, to show that the testator meant to dispose of his whole interest in a particular devise, unless words are used which plainly indicate an intent to limit it. The devise is as follows: “ After that term, it is my will and desire that it fall into
A general restraint upon the alienation of a fee would be void. A partial restraint has been allowed, when it was not inconsistent with a reasonable enjoyment of the fee: as that the devisee shall not alien to a particular person or in mortmain, Coke Litt. 223 a. And in the case of M’Williams v. Neely, 2 S. & R. 513, Chief Justice Tilghman, in asserting the general doctrine, that, when an estate is given, any restraint upon it which destroys its character is void, acknowledges the doctrine of the case in Leonard, that a partial restriction not inconsistent with a reasonable enjoyment of the fee is good. In this case, however, the restriction is uncertain. Whom did the testator mean by the heirs of his father's family ? A man’s family may be considered as his household at a particular period ; or, as his race or generation. There is nothing in the will to designate or describe what the testator meant by his father’s family. A family, in its collective or aggregate capacity, can have no heirs. We are, therefore, all in the dark as to whom the testator intended to designate by the use of the words, “ heirs of his father’s family.” We may, perhaps, indulge a reasonable conjecture that he intended to describe the heirs of his father. If so,
The testator had a manifest general intent to give a fee-simple in the land to his brother William; he had an obscure, uncertain, and ill-defined particular or secondary intent in relation to the power of alienation, which would be inconsistent with a reasonable enjoyment of the fee, and which is, therefore, void; and void also for uncertainty.
William Huey, under whom the defendant claims, took a fee-simple in the land in dispute. This rules the whole case.
Judgment affirmed.