1. Complainant entered into an agreement with defendant trust company whereby income from certain securities deposited with the company as trustee and belonging to her husband, then in prosperous circumstances, was to be applied to pay premiums on a large insurance policy issued on her husband's life, until his death. Under the provisions of the trust, the proceeds of the policy, which was payable to the company, as well as the proceeds from the securities, were to form a trust fund from which the company was to pay the complainant wife the income for life if she survived her husband; thereafter to her children for life and on their death to pay the corpus as the children by will might direct; or in default of will, to the issue of the insured; or in default of both will and issue, then to the brother of the assured or, if he be dead, to his six children. Both complainant and her husband are reduced to penury; the income received by the trustee company from the trust securities has dwindled so that it barely meets premium requirements. Two of complainant's children are still infants; the rest adults. Husband and wife, and the adult children, file this bill seeking to revoke the trust agreement and have the securities restored for the pressing needs of the family. The brother of the assured and his children appear but do not oppose; the trust company answers but has no special interest in the outcome of the suit. Held, that the agreement is essentially one for the welfare of the family and, under the circumstances, is now improvident as to the minor children to whom it is of greater importance that they have the necessaries of life now than patrimony at a later date. The agreement revoked and the securities to be restored.
2. The trust agreement represents a voluntary gift to the beneficiaries, none of whom have acted upon it or changed their position.
3. At the time the complainant wife signed the trust agreement, she not only did not understand the effect of the agreement (though it was read to her) but was actually unacquainted with its provisions. Nor was either the wife or the husband aware of, the irrevocable nature of the arrangement which must now be set aside because it divested them of practically all they had and put it out of their power to resort to any fund to tide them over the lean years of the present depression.
PER CURIAM.
We affirm the decree below and, in the main, for the reasons stated by the vice-chancellor in the foregoing opinion. We observe, however, that it was noted upon the record, by consent, that Frank Reuther is alive; that he has six children, all of whom are alive and all of whom are of age; and that appearance was entered for all. Wherefore these interests appear and do not contest. We remark further that that which, in our opinion, weighs the scales down in favor of a setting aside of the trust agreement is that that instrument is essentially one for the welfare of the family and, with that in mind, that it is improvident as to the minors — the only persons in immediate beneficial interest who do not, and cannot, pray for an annulment. It is of vastly more importance that the necessaries of life — roof, food, clothing and education — be provided for them now than that they should have patrimony at some future time when in all probability they will be able, if properly nurtured, to care for themselves. It would be of small advantage to them to be marred in adolescence that they might have substance later. That would be quite foreign to the underlying purpose of the agreement.
The decree below will be affirmed.
For affirmance — THE CHIEF-JUSTICE, TRENCHARD, LLOYD, CASE, BODINE, DONGES, HEHER, PERSKIE, VAN BUSKIRK, KAYS, HETFIELD, DEAR, WELLS, DILL, JJ. 14.
For reversal — PARKER, J. 1.