Wills — Construction — Legacies — Specific or demonstrative — Direction to pay out of proceeds of real estate — Intention of testator — Interest — Time payable — Abatement.
1. Where testatrix provided that her real estate should be sold and bequeathed to certain named persons specified sums "to be paid from the amount received from the sale of my real estate", such legacies were specific and not demonstrative.
2. The intention of the testator determines whether a legacy is specific or demonstrative.
3. Legacies bear interest from the time they are payable, and this time is to be ascertained from the intention of the testator.
4. Where a testator directs a sale of his real estate and the payment of certain legacies from the proceeds, an intention is indicated that the legacies should not bear interest until they are payable, to wit, the date when the sale is effective.
5. Where legacies are specific and the proceeds of sale are insufficient to pay them in full, they should abate pro tanto.
6. An abatement to be proportionate should include interest but where the legacies are all of the same character, interest will be disregarded.
Argued April 18, 1941.
PER CURIAM, June 30, 1941:
The decree of the court below will be affirmed on the opinion of President Judge TRIMBLE, filed May 29, 1940. To the cases cited by him as supporting the ruling that the legacies to the appellants "to be paid from the amount received from the sale of my real estate" were specific and not demonstrative, may be added, Cryder's Appeal, 11 Pa. 72; Crawford's Estate, 293 Pa. 570, 574, 575, 143 A. 214; Forsyth's Estate, 335 Pa. 281, 284, 285, 6 A.2d 817; Stoever's Estate, 45 Pa. Super. 451, 459, 460.
Decree affirmed at the costs of the appellants.