Dodin v. Dodin

The plaintiff’s right to dower for which the action was brought is not questioned. She is the widow of Mansuy P. Dodin, deceased. Alexander J. Dodin, the appellant, was his son by a former wife. The defendant Josephine Dodin was an adopted daughter of the decedent. As the widow’s dower could not be set off in parcel, it became necessary to determine who would be entitled to the proceeds of the sale after deducting her dower, for which she filed her consent to accept a sum in gross. The son contests the right of the adopted daughter to take as heir of the father. She was adopted by him in the year 1886, pursuant to the provisions of the statute which provided that:

“A child, when adopted, shall take the name o£ the person adopting, and the two thenceforth shall sustain toward each other the legal relation of parent and child, and have all the rights and he subject to all the duties of that relation, excepting the right of inheritance, except that as respects the passing and limitations over of real and personal property, under and by deeds, conveyances, wills, devises and trusts said child adopted shall not be deemed to sustain the legal relation of child to the person so adopting.” Laws 1873, c. 830, •§ 10.

The statute so remained until in the year 1887, when that section, unaltered down to the first exception, was so amended as to exclude that exception, and so as thence to read as follows, to wit:

“Including the right of inheritance, and the heirs and next of kin of the ■child so adopted shall be the same as if the said child was the legitimate child of the person so adopting, except that as respects the passing and limitation over of real and personal property, under and by deeds, conveyances, wills, •devises and trusts, dependent upon the person adopting dying without heirs, said child adopted shall not be deemed to sustain the legal relation of child to the person so adopting so as to defeat the rights of remaindermen and in case of the death of the person so adopted the person so adopting as above provided shall for the purpose of inheritance, sustain the same relation of parent to the person so adopted.” Laws 1887, c. 703.

In April, 1895, Mansuy P. Dodin died, leaving a will, which was made in March, 1891,and admitted to probate in May, 1895,whereby he gave Alexander J. Dodin $20,000, and, after giving some legacies to others, he gave to his wife and Patrick C. Davey $15,000 in trust, to be invested at interest, and apply the income, or so much of it as shall be necessary and convenient—

"“To the support, maintenance, and education of my adopted daughter, called Josephine Dodin, during her minority, and, on her becoming of legal age, then this trust to become at an end, and the body and accretions of said trust to become her sole property absolutely; and, should she die before attaining the said age of twenty-one years, then and in that case the body and accumulations of this trust shall be as of the remainder of my estate.”

“Seventh. And the remainder oí my estate, real, personal, and equitable, not hereinbefore devised and bequeathed, oí which I die possessed or entitled to, I hereby direct to descend and be distributed according to the laws of the state oí New York.”

It is not important to inquire whether Dodin may be deemed to have died testate or intestate as to the residue of his estate, since it was to descend and be distributed according to the laws of the state of New York. Such was,his testamentary direction without qualification, and it must be assumed that he intended to submit the disposition of his residuary estate to the laws of descent and distribution, which provided that the real estate of a person dying without devising the same should descend to his lineal descendants, and, if of equal degree, the inheritance should descend in equal parts. 1 Eev. St. p. 751, §§ 1, 2.

The only question requiring consideration is whether Josephine had the right of inheritance as heir of her adopting parent. The right was denied to an adopted child by the act of 1873, and, as the law was at the time of her adoption, she had no capacity arising from that relation to inherit. The right or rather capacity of inheritance was granted by the act of 1887 to adopted children coming within its provisions. It is urged on the part of the appellant that this cannot be made applicable to the relation of Josephine in that respect without giving to them a retroactive effect. If that is so, it is clear that she can take no aid from the act of 1887. While the provisions of the former act remaining unchanged are deemed continued, the amendments included in the later act are such only from the time of their adoption. Ely v. Holton, 15 N. Y. 595 . And an amendatory statute has no retroactive effect unless such appears to have been the legislative intent. No such purpose appears in the amendatory provisions of the act of 1887. They therefore can have prospective application only. Estate of Miller, 110 N. Y. 216 , 18 N. E. 139 . If the adopting parent had died before such amendments to the tenth section of the act of 1873 were made, it is clear that, within that rule, they could not have been applicable to the relation of Josephine as an adopted child. But that relation was created pursuant to such prior act, and existed when the amendments to it by the later act were adopted. They did not make her any more the adopted child of Dodin than she became and was on her adoption the year before, but merely gave her, as such adopted child, the capacity to inherit. This was a mere right, dependent upon future conditions which should permit it, essential to which were the death of Dodin without devising his estate, and her survival of him; and, further, that the law of descent should not be so altered before his death as to deny the right of inheritance to the children of a decedent who should die intestate. Although it is not likely that the latter contingency will ever become the consequence of law in this country, such right of inheritance is dependent and rests upon positive law, which it is within the lawmaking power to change to the disadvantage of lineal descendants and any other class of relatives. 1 Bl. Comm. 448.

As was well said by Mr. Justice Beekman in his opinion at special term:

“Tlie amendment oí 1887 was, in effect, a modification of the statute of descents, giving to the word ‘children,’ as used in that statute, a meaning which includes adopted as well as children of the blood of the deceased. * * * The effect and operation of the act in question, then, is prospective, not retrospective. It simply adds adopted children to the list of those who shall be capable of inheriting if at the time the descent is cast they are within that description.”

None of the cases cited by the learned counsel for the appellant are in principle inconsistent with the views above expressed. In Wyeth v. Stone, 144 Mass. 441 , 11 N. E. 729 , it was held that a child adopted by the widow of the testator did not come within the contemplation of the provision of his will devising the remainder of his estate to her heirs.. And Reinders v. Koppelman, 94 Mo. 338 , 7 S. W. 288 , was to the same effect. There the testator gave the use of his estate to his wife during life, then one-half of it to “the nearest lawful heirs” of himself and wife. It was held that a son adopted by the widow did not come within the meaning of such residuary beneficiaries. In Russell v. Russell, 84 Ala. 48 , 3 South. 900 , the testator, after making his will, adopted a child. It was held that, by reason of the language of the statute, the right of the adopted child was limited to inheritance, and therefore he could not take under the testamentary gift of property to the children of the testator. In Jenkins v. Jenkins, 64 N. H. 407 , 14 Atl. 557 , the testator gave to one of his sons the residue of Ms estate for life, and, if the son should die leaving no issue, it should go to another person referred to. After the death of the testator, an act was passed providing for the adoption of children, pursuant to which the son adopted a child, and afterwards died. Held, that the adopted child did not constitute issue of the son, within the meaning of the will, and that the residuary devisee had a contingently vested estate in the property at the time the statutory power to adopt the cMld was created. The doctrine of the cases of Schafer v. Eneu, 54 Pa. St. 304 , and Ballard v. Ward, 89 Pa. St. 358 , was similar, and substantially to the same effect. In all those cases the adoption of the children took place after the death of the ancestors and testators, save in the one case which was disposed of upon the construction of the language of the statute. The view here taken is that the provision of the act of 1887 conferring upon adopted children the capacity as such to inherit was, in its application to those adopted under the act of 1873 by adopting parents living at the time such amendatory act took effect, prospective, and therefore the right of inheritance in Josephine, . resulting from such capacity, became operative on the decease of her adopting parent, the conditions then being such as to permit it.

The interlocutory judgment should therefore be affirmed.

GOODRICH, P. J., and BARTLETT and HATCH, JJ., concur.

I concur with Mr. Justice BEADLEY in his view that the amendment of 1887 to the statute of 1873, relative to adoption, conferred on the defendant Josephine Do din the right to inherit from her adopting father, though her adoption was prior to the enactment of the amendment. I am strongly of the opinion, however, that the testator never intended that his adopted child should share in his residuary estate. In the second clause of his will he refers to his son, the defendant Alexander, as his “son and only child.” By the fifth clause of his will he directs the creation of a fund of $15,000, the income to be applied to his “adopted daughter, called Josephine Dodin, during her minority,” the fund to go to her on her attaining majority, and, in case of her death before that time, to fall into his residuary estate. This provision is hardly consistent with an intention that the adopted daughter should share in that residuary estate. While the law made the defendant Josephine a legal child of the deceased, the test is not what her status was at law, but how she is treated in the nomenclature or vocabulary of the testator. Gelston v. Shields, 16 Hun, 143 , 78 N. Y. 275 . But this view does not aid the appellant. He concedes, and, in fact, asserts as an argument in his favor, the well-known principle that, to exclude the heir at law,, “mere negative words will not suffice; there must be an actual disposition of the estate to some other person.” He forgets, however, that, if our view of the construction of the statute is correct, the adopted daughter was as much an heir at law of the testator as if she had sprung from his loins, and that the same rule that favors the son equally favors the daughter, and forbids her exclusion from her patrimony. If the gift of the residuary estate had been to the testator’s wife and child, we might well hold that the only child contemplated by the testator was his natural son. But the direction is that the remainder shall descend and be distributed according to the laws of the state of New York. As, under those laws, the adopted daughter is entitled to an inheritance, this is a devise to her, though, as already stated, my fear is that the testator did not intend this disposition of his estate. The difficulty has proceeded from his ignorance of the statutory law on the subject of descents, an ignorance which we cannot remedy by making a new will for him.