## Facts

- Mary Parker (the testatrix) left the residue of her estate on trust.
- Her will directed the trustees to apply the dividends, income, and interest of the residuary trust for the benefit of her children as the trustees considered necessary until the children attained their respective ages of 21.
- The will then directed that “from and immediately after” the children attaining their respective ages of 21, the trustees were to pay the trust corpus to Parker’s children in equal shares.
- Parker was survived by two sons and a daughter.
- One son died before reaching age 21.
- The question arose whether the deceased son had any transmissible interest in the trust corpus so that his personal representatives could claim an equal share, or whether attaining 21 was a condition to taking the capital.

## Issues

1. Whether the will gave Parker’s children vested interests in the residuary corpus at her death with payment postponed until age 21, or instead made each child’s right to capital conditional on attaining 21.
2. If the capital gift was conditional on attaining 21, whether the son who died under 21 (and thus his estate) took any share in the trust corpus.

## Decision

- The court construed the gift of the corpus as contingent on each child attaining age 21.
- The phrase directing payment of the capital “from and immediately after” attaining 21 was treated as part of the gift itself, not merely a clause postponing payment of an already vested gift.
- The deceased son, having died before 21, never satisfied the condition to take any share of the corpus.
- Because no vested interest in the capital arose in the deceased son, his personal representatives were not entitled to any portion of the trust corpus.

## Legal Principles

- Where a will contains no separate present gift of capital, and the only words giving the corpus direct that it be paid “from and after” a beneficiary reaches a stated age, attaining that age is ordinarily a condition precedent to taking the capital.
- A direction that trustees may apply income for a child’s benefit during minority can operate as a maintenance provision and does not, by itself, convert an age-conditioned capital gift into a vested remainder.
- The general tendency to favor vesting yields to clear gift language tying entitlement to a future age; courts will not treat such language as mere timing if the structure of the clause makes the age requirement part of the gift.
- When a class gift is framed so that members take only upon satisfying an age condition, a member who dies before that age takes no transmissible share of the capital unless the instrument provides otherwise.

## Conclusion

In *In re Parker*, the court held that the will’s direction to pay the residuary corpus to the children “from and immediately after” they attained 21 made attainment of 21 a condition to taking the capital; therefore, the son who died before 21 took no share in the corpus, and his estate was not entitled to participate in the distribution of the trust capital.


In re Parker, L.R. 16 Ch. Div. 44 (1880)