7 Watts 455 | Pa. | 1838
The opinion of the Court was delivered by
The charge of the judge below presents in a succinct and clear manner the history of Pennsylvania legislation on the subject of the right of aliens to hold and transmit real estate. The plaintiff in error relies on certain points arising upon this charge, as entitling him to a reversal of the judgment.
1. It is suggested that without office found the estate would descend to the heir. But the law is, that if an alien purchase land, or if land be devised to him, he may take and hold until an inquest of office; but upon his death the land would instantly and of necessity (as the freehold cannot be kept in abeyance), without any inquest of office, escheat and vest in the state, because he is incompetent to transmit by hereditary descent. See the cases cited 2 Kent’s Comm. 54. If therefore John Lawyer was incapable (on account of alienage) of holding real estate in Pennsylvania and of transmitting it to alien heirs, his estate escheated to the commonwealth on his death without inquest of office; it became vested in the commonwealth, and they bad power to transfer it by act of the legislature to the widow, who took it subject to the rights of others by the express saving in the act. When the legislature therefore, by the act of the 25th of February 1814, granted to Ann Maria Lawyer, the wife of the deceased, the interest which they had by escheat, they passed the estate accruing to them by the alienage of the heirs.
2. The main question raised by the plaintiff in error is, on the due construction of the act of 23d of February 1791: did that act, as the plaintiff in error contends, authorize a citizen or subject of a foreign state to take lands in Pennsylvania by devise or descent from an alien who had purchased them without having complied with the conditions imposed by law1? It seems to me that this construction would be contrary to the letter of the act and its whole object and design. The act was passed, as the preamble recites, for the encouragement of persons purchasing lands in this state; and therefore must naturally refer to persons purchasing lawfully, and not to persons acquiring
Judgment affirmed.