Schmucker v. Adams
Schmucker v. Adams
Opinion of the Court
filed the following opinion:
It appears from the record in this case taken as a whole that plaintiffs sold certain real estate to defendant, who, after paying the larger part of the consideration, refuses to pay the balance of $1,250 on the ground that the vendors have no title to convey. This action is brought to recover that amount. The plaintiff’s declaration was met with an affidavit of defense making a general denial of plaintiffs’ right and defendant’s liability. Thereupon the parties agreed upon a statement of the case for the decision of the court. All the facts being explicitly set forth therein it is unnecessary to rehearse them at length. The question arising upon them seems to be a simple one, and the answer to it plainly prescribed by the express language of the statute.
The Act of April 8, 1833, P. L. 315, declares in sec. 6, that: “In default of issue, and brothers and sisters of the whole blood and their descendants, and also father and mother, competent by this act to take an estate of inheritance therein, the real estate .... shall descend to and be vested in the brothers and sisters of the half blood of the intestate, and their issue, in like manner, respectively, as is ... . provided for the case of brothers and sisters of the whole blood and their issue.”
To this sec. 9 of the same act adds the proviso: “That no person who is not of the blood of the ancestors . . . . from whom any real estate descended, or by whom it was given or devised to the intestate, shall, in any of the cases before mentioned, take any estate of inheritance therein, but such real estate, subject to such life estate as may be in existence .... shall pass to and vest in such other persons as would be entitled by this act, if the persons not of the blood of such ancestor .... had never existed, or were dead at the decease of the intestate.”
The real estate of which that here in question is a part was originally acquired by Joseph Hiester. Mary E.
entire estate to his mother was ineffective by reason of her predecease: Sword v. Adams, 3 Yeates, 34. An amicable partition made in 1902, between Henry A. Muhlenberg III and his then cotenant is, for the reason already stated, of no significance for present purposes. His title before and after the partition was by descent and devise, never by purchase. This circumstance is controlling of the application of the statute above quoted as determining the succession of those of the blood of the ancestor: Lynch’s Est., 220 Pa. 14. That ancestor was Joseph Hiester. With respect to the realty of Henry A. Muhlenberg III derived from Joseph Hiester (and it is a portion of that only that is here involved) the heirs of Henry A. Muhlenberg III were the surviving sons and daughters of Hiester H. Muhlenberg, descendants of Joseph Hiester. They and by conveyance from them the children of a deceased daughter, i. e., all the plaintiffs in this case, must therefore be adjudged to be the owners of the property. Hence according to the terms of the case stated they are entitled to judgment.
And now, January 17, 1910, upon the case stated judgment is entered for plaintiffs and against defendant for $1,250.
The judgment is affirmed for the reasons given in the opinion of the learned president judge of the common pleas.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.