80 Miss. 239 | Miss. | 1902
delivered the opinion of the court.
The will in the record giving rise to this proceeding is somewhat remarkable as a testamentary instrument in modern times. It also serves to open a field for serious legislative consideration. The reporter is requested to publish it in full, together with the brief of counsel for appellants and the opinion of the learned chancellor in the court below. Appellees are mere testamentary trustees, with no personal or controversial interest, but who simply wish their course marked out by adjudication. Our court of last resort has .never yet been called on to align itself with any class of decisions on the question involved, and it must do so now. In this, however, it declines to announce any “hard and fast rule” to control in all cases of apparent similitude, but simply, proposes to declare its opinion of the intent of the testator in the-matter in -hand. . This will gives the whole estate to the trustees, with provision, for their successors, with directions to sell all real estate, and convert everything into personalty, with the avowed.purpose to-avoid the requirements of law as to land and as to perpetuities; and it gives the trustees,ample powers of investment in any solvent securities so as to provide income. It provides for two large classes of beneficiaries — one, for life, of this income, and the other of the corpus, after fifty years, with, such contingencies as postpone final distribution of all to probably seventy years after the testator’s death. The second clause obliges the trustees to distribute, as directed in the third .clause, “the annual income derived -from all my estate, both that of which I may
Reserved and remanded’, with sixty days to appellees to answer after mandate filed in the court below. ’