Black v. Black
Supreme
Court of Appeals of
171
Johnson,
pp. 111-114
Facts: The Black siblings owned a
farm. They signed a joint will saying
that if any of them should die, the dead person’s property would be split among
the surviving siblings. They also agreed
that after all three of them died, their nieces and nephews would get
everything “in fee”. After two of the
siblings died, the third one, Jessie, wrote up new deeds conveying the farm to
different people while reserving herself a life estate. Jessie filed a complaint asserting that she
should now own everything in fee simple and that none of the nieces and nephews
owned any interest in any of the property.
The nieces and nephews counterclaimed to try to have the deeds declared
null and void. The circuit court found
that Jessie only had a life estate in the property and thus the deeds were no
good. Jessie appealed.
Issue: Has Jessie acquired fee
simple title to the property in question?
Rule:
Analysis: The court finds that the
joint will implicitly gives Jessie a life
estate and gives the nieces and nephews a remainder in fee simple.
This
will seems pretty clear on its face to me.
Under any reasonable principles of interpretation, you would figure that
there would be no reason to have “FIRST” and “SECOND” or two have two parts or
the “however” if you really just wanted to leave all the property in fee to the
last surviving person. It makes me
wonder just what was going down in this case.
Conclusion: The circuit court’s
decision is upheld.