Barfield v. Aiken

Hawkins, Justice.

(After stating the foregoing facts.) Only the 7th headnote requires any elaboration. We fully recognize the well-settled rule that in the construction of wills the courts should look to that- interpretation which carries out the provisions of the statute of distribution, rather than that which defeats them; that, in the absence of anything in the will to the contrary, the presumption is that the ancestor intended that his property should go where the la,w carries it, which is supposed to be the channel of natural descent; and that the use of such terms as “in equal shares,”…