children come of age, or in other ways made difficult to get at and utilize for pressing needs. If a man does not know what will happen to his property when he dies, he should find out. If he finds that he ought to make a will to help those whom he leaves behind him to get the most good from his estate, it is his duty to execute a will forthwith. Notes: 1. Do not superstitiously believe that making a will shortens your life. 2. Find out exactly what will happen to your property if you are killed in an auto smash next week, leaving no will. 3. Do not put off making a will until it must be hurried through or left unmade. § 27. Complexity of Provisions The writer of one of the best modern texts on wills says: In these days the safest will is that which deals justly by the natural objects of one's bounty and distributes in a simple manner; attempting little beyond limiting property so as to give the income to some person for life, with capital over on his death, if limiting at all. If your estate be a small one and the beneficiaries needy, all the more should you make a simple will and not attempt complex dispositions.1 The wills given in Forms 3 and 4 are likely to effect just what the testator wished, because they are clear, because they go into immediate effect, because nothing is contingent, and because the property goes where it naturally should go. If the amount of property is not large, it should be easier to decide just where it should go to do the most good to the natural legatees of the testator. In most cases when the 'Schouler, Wills, Executors and Administrators, Vol. I, p. 842. amount of the estate is small and there are minor children, it should be left to their mother rather than have the children's share set off and placed in the hands of a guardian. There are of course cases where the wife is not skilled in caring for property, and then she needs a guardian as much as the children do. Most women though are more careful of money than men are and can be trusted to make small means go a long way. If a man's wife is of the type that does not make the most of what she has, it is a simple matter to put it all in the hands of a trust company or bank with instructions to pay her the income quarterly. Notes: 1. If the property is small the will should be simple 3. The object of a will may be to tie up the estate § 28. Trying to Control Estate Too Long The creation of perpetuities, or the tying up of estates for long periods, is not favored by the law. A wealthy man in England, named Thelluson, left nothing to his immediate heirs, but bequeathed all his property to a board of trustees to accumulate the income and finally, after many years, to turn the vast aggregated fortune over to one representative of the family. If the will had been carried out along the lines laid down, the final legatee would have been the richest man in all England. The highest courts decided that any such perpetuities or long extended trusts were, as the law stood, legal. But then Parliament intervened and, on the ground that it was to the interests of the nation that estates should not be kept together save for limited periods, passed what is known as the Thelluson Act, which curtails the period during which estates can be kept intact. The same general principle prevails throughout this country, and all attempts to create accumulations, or perpetuities, or to keep property indefinitely in one family, are limited in all the states. The usual rule is that an estate may be kept together for "a life or lives in being" and twenty-one years thereafter. That is, a man can leave his property to trustees to pay the income to members of his family during their lives, and to their heirs or descendants for twenty-one years longer, after which period it must be distributed to those who are to keep it. At the expiration of twenty-one years after the end of the last life named, the trust must end and the property be given absolutely to some person or persons. The testator's control must terminate at that point. Practically, unless a man's heirs are insane, incapable, crippled, or in some other way incompetent, it is rarely wise to tie up property longer than is necessary for children to come of age. The wisest man cannot foresee the future, and the next generation can best be left to solve its own problems. Mr. Dooley travesties the fondness some men have for managing for those who come after them as follows: All me money I lave to me faithful frind, th' Confidintyal Chattel Morgedge comp'ny, which I command to disburse as follows: to me devoted wife, Belinda Ann Snivvy, shall be paid the sum iv four hundred dollars per annum, undher th' followin' conditions: That she shall niver marry again; that she shall wear a black veil f'r th' rest of her life in me honor; that she shall go to me grave wanst a week an' dew it with her tears; that she shall be sorry that she spoke to me th' way she did: ... To me son Silas I lave th' use ive me horse and buggy an' two bags iv oats ontil he has arrived a th' age iv forty five. If at that time he has shown a proper apprecyation iv Me sicond son Ephraim I have provided f'r already be Me son Elias, havin' offended me be goin' to a baseball game, I desire that he shall get nawthin' fr'm me estate.' § 29. Making Requests That Bind Legatees It is common to phrase wills in this form: I give to my wife Flora Adams all my stock in the Adams Manufacturing Company and all of my Pennsylvania Railroad Bonds and such other bonds and stocks as I may own at the time of my death. I request my said wife from the income from said bonds to give to my sister Mary G. Adams the sum annually of $300 during her life. I request my said wife to give my sister Anna B. McNeil from the income of my estate annually the sum of $500. Requests so phrased are called "precatory requests" and are usually interpreted as giving the beneficiary an absolute right to the amounts. In such a case as is given the wife would be a trustee for the beneficiaries named. It would be better under such circumstances to use the word "direct" instead of "request," and leave no chance for a misunderstanding. If it is intended to be optional, it should be worded "I ask my said wife, in her discretion, to give," etc. It might be better, if it is intended to be entirely discretionary, to leave a private letter of instruction to the wife and to omit any reference to such requests in the will. Such a letter will have no legal force and will give the beneficiaries no legal claim upon her bounty. Many lawsuits have arisen from such loose expression of intent. On Making a Will and Other Necessary Evils, by Mr. Dooley. Note: 1. “Avoid if possible precatory words, and uncertainty in gifts and be careful as to creating conditions, limitations, remainders, etc." § 30. Making a Will When Mind and Body Are Impaired If a man were asked to transact any ordinary piece of business involving possibly only a few hundred dollars, he would not risk writing a letter or signing a contract when he was sick, in pain, or physically exhausted. Yet men again and again postpone making their wills until they are near the end. While courts are reluctant to disturb a will made. under such conditions, they will do so if there is any evidence of irrationality. The real question is for the individual to say whether he thinks he can provide for those he wishes to look out for as well, when sick, weary, and sinking away from life and all its concerns, as when, free from pain and with unclouded brain, he sits in his office with the work-a-day world around him. Or, to put it from another point of view, if you were an heir or a possible legatee of some older person, would you prefer that he wrote his will while in good health, sane, and with a well man's outlook on life, or that he put off making his will until he was so sick that he expected never to recover? A man owes it to those he leaves to prepare a sane, careful, intelligent will, so that they have the least trouble and the most benefit. When a man's body weakens his will weakens, his forcefulness departs, and his reason clouds over. Many painful cases have come up before courts of law where a man in his last sickness has been angered or importuned or cajoled into making a will desired by some pertinacious person who perhaps kept from him those who would have persuaded him otherwise. Other repulsive cases record how greedy rela ⚫ Schouler, Wills, Executors and Administrators, Vol. I, p. 842, |