Mercantile-Safe Deposit & Trust Co. v. Purifoy

I respectfully dissent.

We recently said in Wesley Home v. Merc.-Safe Dep. & Tr., 265 Md. 185, 198, 289 A. 2d 337 (1972), that “the cardinal *60principle of construction of wills [is] that the intention of the testator be carried out, as deduced from the ‘four corners’ of the will,” citing a number of Maryland cases. I regard it as manifestly improper to divine that intention by making use of a statute that did not come into existence until many years after the effective date of the instruments in the absence of a clear indication in the instruments that law of a later date should be used. I…