Miller v. McNeill
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
Error 'to the Common Pleas of Montgomery county. This was an issue devisavit vel non, directed by the Register’s Court, to try the validity of a certain writing purporting to be the last Will of John Miller, deceased, wherein Elizabeth'McNeill, the principal legatee named in the said will, was plaintiff, and John Miller, the heir at law of the decedent, was defendant. One of the subscribing witnesses was dead, but his signature was duly proved.
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Error 'to the Common Pleas of Montgomery county. This was an issue devisavit vel non, directed by the Register’s Court, to try the validity of a certain writing purporting to be the last Will of John Miller, deceased, wherein Elizabeth'McNeill, the principal legatee named in the said will, was plaintiff, and John Miller, the heir at law of the decedent, was defendant. One of the subscribing witnesses was dead, but his signature was duly proved. The other subscribing witness testified, that before the testator signed the paper, the witnesses put their signatures to it, and the testator…
1Opinion of the Court
The opinion of the court was delivered by
Woodward, J.
A testator and the subscribing witnesses to his will were assembled around the same table at the same time; all signed á will in the presence of each other, but the subscribing witnesses wrote their names before the testator wrote his. The plaintiff in error thinks this was an insufficient attestation, and some observations of Sir H. Jenner Eust, in 3 Curteis R. 117, 648, upon the requirements of the English statute, which is more exacting in its terms than ours, are relied on for upsetting this will.
Our statute contemplates, undoubtedly, a…
2Cited by2 opinions
- Brantlinger WillSupreme Court of Pennsylvania · 1965
- Gibson v. NelsonIllinois Supreme Court · 1899