75 Pa. Super. 276 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1920
Opinion by
Esther M. Hain died October 10, .1918; her daughter Margaret Strause died ten days later. The adminis
Appellant contends that the court should have held that the fund belonged to the mother’s estate and not to the daughter’s. Appellee contends that appellant presented his claim in the wrong forum.
We need not now inquire how comprehensive the power of the orphans’ court to determine the ownership of property claimed respectively by a decedent’s estate and by another has been held to be. For the purposes of this case, the decisions are clear. The fund was realized by the sale of real estate once owned in fee by the daughter, subject to her mother’s dower. The daughter conveyed the property to her mother in fee; there was evidence that she was to enjoy it only for life and to carry out that understanding, executed a will devising it to her daughter. The mother sold the property and deposited the proceeds in bank. Soon afterwards she withdrew them and both she and her daughter deposited them in the savings department of the bank in the names of “Esther M. Hain or Margaret Strause.” During Mrs. Hain’s lifetime, nothing was withdrawn. After her death, Mrs. Strause withdrew $75. The learned court below concluded that it was the intention of mother and daughter to create a joint interest in them in the deposit with a right of survivorship. There was evidence to support that conclusion.
In Williams’s Estate, 236 Pa. 259, Mr. Justice Mosch7.T«TnaR reviewed a number of cases considering the jurisdiction of the orphans’ court to try disputed claims to property and divided them into two classes, one being
In Gaffney’s Est., 146 Pa. 49, it appeared that when Gaffney died, there was a deposit in bank in the name of “Hugh Gaffney, Trustee for Polly McKim.” At the audit of the account of Gaffney’s executor, the administrator of Polly McKim claimed the deposit, and the auditor found that the fund “while deposited as ‘Hugh Gaffney, trustee/ is funds of the estate of Hugh Gaffney, and has been paid over to that estate; there being no evidence showing a donation of that money to Polly McKim, and, as a matter of law, if the money belongs to Polly McKim, the Johnstown Savings Bank is the responsible party to the administrator of Polly McKim.”
Exceptions to the finding of the auditor were dismissed and his report was confirmed. That confirmation was assigned for error, and on appeal was reversed. Gaffney’s executor was ordered to pay the amount to the administrator of Polly McKim. The Supreme Court said, “It does not follow that because the bank may have made a mistake and paid the money to the wrong person
The assignments of error are overruled and the order is affirmed at the cost of appellant.