Polen v. Baker

This case presents the issue of whether only surviving beneficiaries named in a will’s residuary clause should receive equal shares of the residuary estate, or whether the children of a beneficiary who also was named in the residuary clause but who predeceased the testator should inherit his share. For *564the reasons that follow, we find that only the surviving named beneficiaries should share in the residuary estate.

I

Following the death of Frances P. Haines, appellee, Dixie Lee Polen, the executor of Haines’s estate, brought a will construction action in the Pickaway County Common Pleas Court,…