DocketNumber: Appeal, No. 391
Citation Numbers: 221 Pa. 474, 70 A. 845, 1908 Pa. LEXIS 516
Judges: Brown, Elkin, Mestrezat, Mitchell, Potter
Filed Date: 5/25/1908
Status: Precedential
Modified Date: 10/19/2024
It is quite true, as urged by the appellants, that when a judicial decision is rendered the law is not presumed to be changed by it, but to have been the same before as after, although previous decisions may have been to a different effect. This is the general rule, but it is not to be applied-in all cases without discrimination. On the subject of interpretation of wills it meets the cardinal and controlling principle that the intention of the testator must prevail. It is undeniable that this principle had in certain classes of cases been so overlaid and hedged in by arbitrary canons of construction as to be
In the present case, therefore, as in all others, the question is, what was the intention-of the testator, and that is to be ascertained by what the testator understood to be the legal meaning of his language at the time he used it. It is practically 'conceded that at the date of the testator’s will the gift of a life estate to his daughter and after her decease then to her children “ her surviving,” gave the daughter’s daughter a vested remainder. That being the generally accepted meaning of the language at the time the testator used it, must, in the absence of anything to the contrary, be accepted as the expression of his actual intent.
On this point we adopt what was said by the learned judge below.
Decree affirmed.