Taylor Et Al. v. Albree

QUA, Justice. The trustees under the will of George W. A. Williams, late of Boston, again desire the aid of the court in construing his will. See Abbott v. Williams, 268 Mass. 275, 167 N.E. 357. The main questions are correlative and for convenience may be stated as the single question whether upon the death in 1939 of the last surviving annuitant other than Pearce Penhallow Williams the principal trust set up by the will came to an end and the fund became distributable under the twenty-eighth article of the will or whether the trust must continue until the death of Pearce Penhallow Williams in order to support an annuity of $1,200 a year given to him by the twenty-fifth article. The will was executed in 1887 and was proved and allowed upon the death of the testator in 1891. The first article names the executors and the trustees. The second article gives the widow a legacy of $10,000, together with certain household and personal belongings of the testator. The third to fifth articles, inclusive, give certain pictures to the testator's son and two daughters. The sixth to eighteenth articles, inclusive, give legacies, for the most part in money to an amount not exceeding $1,000, to various relatives and others. The nineteenth article devises the testator's dwelling house on Newbury Street in Boston to the trustees for the use of his widow during her life but at her decease to be added to the 'principal trust fund' of the residue for the purposes named in the twenty-first article. The twentieth article creates a separate trust for the benefit of Sarah E. Merrill during her life, any of the fund remaining at her death to be added to the 'principal trust fund' of the residue for the purposes named in the twenty-first article. The twenty-first article places the residue of the estate in trust to pay certain sums per annum for their respective lives to eleven persons named in seven numbered subdivisions of the article. These persons are the widow of the testator, his son and two daughters, his sister, his brother and his brother's wife, three nieces and one Harriet E. Coffin, who does not appear to have been a relative. The amounts annually payable vary from $6,000 in the case of the widow to $100 in the case of Harriet E. Coffin. The total amount annually payable while all were living would be $13,060. The trustees' inventory in 1892 showed that the corpus of the principal trust, nor including the Newbury Street residence occupied by the widow, amounted to $208,868.43. All these annuities, except that to the widow, were protected by spendthrift provisions against assignment or attachment by creditors of the annuitant, and those to women were to be free from the control of their husbands. The twenty-second to twenty-fourth articles, inclusive, directed the trustees to purchase dwelling houses for the use respectively of the testator's son and daughters and their spouses for life, with provision that the properties purchased should fall into the 'principal trust fund' after the termination of the life interests. Then follows the twenty-fifth article in these words: