## Facts

- Arthur Hunnewell’s will created a residuary trust paying income to his wife for life, then dividing principal into shares for his daughters (or their issue).
- For each daughter’s share, Hunnewell granted a testamentary power to “direct and appoint” the share by her duly probated will; in default, the share would pass to the persons entitled under intestacy law.
- After Hunnewell’s wife died (1930), Isabella H. Hunnewell Dexter (a daughter and life beneficiary) requested that trustees distribute substantially all of the principal of her share to a family office for management; trustees transferred cash and securities but retained a small balance and illiquid real estate and mortgage interests.
- Isabella later executed a will disposing of her property primarily to the issue of her predeceased sister, Margaret Blake, but the will did not expressly mention the trust share or the power of appointment.
- At Isabella’s death, approximately $88,000 in cash and retained real estate and mortgage interests remained in the trust share held for her.
- The trustees sought instructions on whether Isabella’s will effectively appointed the remaining trust assets to her will beneficiaries or whether the assets passed under the trust’s default provision (to intestate takers).

## Issues

1. Whether a will that does not expressly refer to a testamentary power of appointment nonetheless exercises the power.
2. Whether the result turns on the power’s character as general (or the practical equivalent) rather than special.
3. Whether the donee’s lifetime treatment of the appointive property supports construing a general residuary devise as an implied exercise of the power.

## Decision

- The Supreme Judicial Court held that Isabella’s will exercised the power of appointment despite the absence of an express reference to the power.
- The court treated the power as functionally general and concluded Isabella was not expected to distinguish appointive property from her own for testamentary disposition.
- The remaining trust property therefore passed to the beneficiaries named in Isabella’s will, not under the trust’s default (intestacy) clause.

## Legal Principles

- An intent to exercise a power of appointment may be implied from the language and structure of a will, particularly where the will broadly disposes of the testator’s estate.
- A power that is, in practical effect, general supports a construction that a general testamentary disposition reaches the appointive property absent a contrary indication.
- Courts are less likely to require explicit reference to a power when the donee had broad control and treated the appointive property as part of her estate during life.
- Where the will and surrounding circumstances show no intent to exclude appointive property, a comprehensive devise may operate as an exercise of a general (or functionally general) power.

## Conclusion

The court construed Isabella’s broadly dispositive will as an effective exercise of a functionally general testamentary power of appointment, causing the remaining trust assets to pass under her will rather than by the trust’s default intestacy-based provision.


Beals v. State Street Bank & Tr. Co., 367 Mass. 318 (1975)