Supreme Court Judge Finds Meaning Of Will "Quite Clear”

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30215, 21 August 1963, Page 10

Supreme Court Judge Finds Meaning Of Will "Quite Clear”

The meaning of the words in which a Cashmere minister, Frederick Richard Inwood, expressed the disposition of his residuary estate was not doubtful, said Mr Justice Wilson in a reserved judgment in the Supreme Court yesterday on an action for interpretation of the will. Inwood died on May 1, 1939, Survived by his wife and three daughters and a son, all by a previous marriage. The action for interpretation of his will was brought by the trustees of his will, John Edward Purchas, a public accountant, and Hugh William Hunter, a solicitor (Mr R. A. Young). His Honour said the contest was between the widow’s estate (Mr E. J. Somers) and the executors of the will of the last daughter to die, Winifred Henrietta Inwood (Mr J. G. Leggat). AU the children had died, as well as the widow, and the question raised was who was the person or persons entitled to the trust fund forming the ultimate residue of the testator’s estate. On behalf of the widow’s estate Mr Somers had claimed one-third of the trust fund on the basis of intestacy, or alternatively one-fourth, on the basis that, on the true construction of the will, the trust fund was given equally to the widow and three daughters.

On behalf of the other defendants Mr Leggat had claimed that the true construction of the will resulted in a gift of the trust fund to the estate of Winifred Inwood as the last survivor of the daughters. “It seems to me quite clear,” his Honour said, “that the widow and the three daughters each took, on the testator’s death, a vested interest in a one-fourth share of the trust funds constituting the final residue of the estate, which interest was divested on her death, and that the share of each beneficiary dying accrued equally to the shares of those still living. Upon the death of the last to die the whole was held on trust for the survivor of the daughters.

“This construction gives to every word of the disposition its ordinary and natural meaning, and carries Into effect the intention of the testator as expressed in those words. It accords also with the intention, shown elsewhere in the will, that the widow, while. enjoying the substance of the testator’s estate during her life, should have no power of disposing of it by will. “Mr Somers's argument would compel me to put a construction on the word ‘surviving’ which would defeat that intention and result either in an intestacy or in the estates of the widow and the daughters each taking one-fourth of the trust fund.” His Honour said he did not think that the fortuitous circumstance that the widow outlived the daughters could affect the result. He held that the trust funds accrued to the estate of Winifred Inwood, the last surviving daughter of the testator.