In Re the Accounting of Thompson

The opinion of the court was delivered by

Weinteaub, C. J.

The question is whether a testamentary gift to “lawful issue” of the testator’s daughter includes a *278child adopted by the daughter after the testator’s death. The trial court held the adopted child did not take. We granted certification before argument in the Appellate Division.

The will was executed in 1935. The testator died the next year, survived by four natural children. One of them, Geraldine, had a natural child, Peter van Gerbig, and in 1943, seven years after the testator’s death, Geraldine and her then husband, Rowan Boone,…