## Facts

- Solomon Thall executed a will that placed the residue of his estate in a trust for the lifetime of his wife.
- The will directed that trust income be shared by four people: Thall’s wife, his sister Sophie Levitsky, and Sophie’s two sons, Emanuel Landis and Ben (Ben Ami) Landis.
- The will provided that, on the wife’s death, the trust corpus would be distributed to Sophie, Emanuel, and Ben, with substitution provisions if any of them died before Thall or before the wife:
  - If Sophie died before Thall or before the wife, Sophie’s share would pass to Emanuel and Ben.
  - If Emanuel or Ben died before Thall or before the wife **with issue**, that nephew’s share would pass to his issue.
  - If Emanuel or Ben died before Thall or before the wife **without issue**, that nephew’s share would pass to his brother.
- The will also made $1,000 bequests to Thall’s other collateral relatives and expressly stated those gifts would lapse if the beneficiary predeceased Thall.
- Ben died in 1956, survived by his daughter, Barbara Ann Landis.
- Sophie died in 1961.
- Emanuel died in 1962 without issue.
- Thall’s wife survived Sophie, Emanuel, and Ben.
- The will did not expressly state who should receive Sophie’s and the nephews’ shares of **trust income** if they died after Thall but before the wife.
- The will also did not expressly address the sequence in which one nephew dies with issue (Ben) and the other later dies without issue (Emanuel), leaving the “brother” referenced in the substitution clause deceased but represented by issue.
- The Surrogate’s Court construed the will to divide the non-widow trust income and the corpus equally between Barbara and Thall’s distributees (heirs at law).
- The Appellate Division modified: it awarded the non-widow income to Thall’s distributees during the wife’s life, but awarded the entire corpus to Barbara at the wife’s death.

## Issues

1. After Sophie, Emanuel, and Ben died during the wife’s lifetime, did the will leave their shares of trust income undisposed of so that the non-widow income passed to Thall’s distributees?
2. Upon the wife’s death, did the will require that the trust corpus be divided between Barbara and Thall’s distributees, or should the corpus pass entirely to Barbara as the remaining issue in the favored family line?
3. May the court supply an implied distribution consistent with the will’s overall plan to avoid partial intestacy in the residuary trust?

## Decision

- The New York Court of Appeals construed the will to carry out the testator’s plan and to avoid intestacy in the residuary trust.
- The court agreed that, at the wife’s death, the entire trust corpus should pass to Barbara Ann Landis, as the issue of Ben and the remaining taker within the line singled out in the will.
- The court rejected treating the silence about post-death income shares as a decision to let substantial portions of the residuary trust pass to Thall’s distributees by intestacy.
- Reading the will as a whole, the court treated the substitution pattern written for the corpus as informing the distribution of the corresponding income interests after the deaths of the named non-spousal income beneficiaries.
- The court therefore reversed the construction that routed the non-widow income to Thall’s distributees and instead directed that the non-widow income follow the will’s substitution scheme, resulting in payment to Barbara (subject to the wife’s continuing income interest).
- Disposition: the Appellate Division’s result as to the corpus was left in place, but its income ruling was modified to conform to the testamentary plan as construed by the Court of Appeals.

## Legal Principles

- A will is construed to carry out the testator’s intent, determined from the instrument read as a whole rather than from isolated phrases.
- Courts favor constructions that avoid intestacy, especially where the will contains a residuary plan and detailed alternative gifts.
- When a will shows careful substitution gifts for a residuary disposition, a court may infer that the same pattern was meant to govern closely related gaps created by an unanticipated order of deaths.
- Express lapse language for small, specific legacies may support an inference that the testator did not intend lapse or intestacy for the more significant residuary trust interests absent similar language.
- Default rules of construction yield when they would defeat an intent that can reasonably be gathered from the will’s overall scheme.

## Conclusion

Estate of Thall holds that when a residuary trust reveals a clear family-centered plan, the court may construe omitted contingencies in line with that plan to prevent substantial residuary income and remainder interests from passing by intestacy to the testator’s distributees; here, that construction placed both the disputed non-widow income during the widow’s life and the entire corpus at the widow’s death in Barbara Ann Landis as the surviving issue within the designated branch.


Estate of Thall, 219 N.E.2d 397 (1966)