Baker v. Keiser

Irving, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. Lewis Keiser, of Montgomery County, by his will, made in September, 1886, directed in the first clause of his will that his executors should sell all his real and personal estate. After directing his debts to be first paid, and making certain provisions for his wife and one of his daughters, by the fourth clause of his will he provided as follows': “I do hereby gi-ve, bequeath, and devise all the rest and residue of my estate, both real and personal, subject to the above-mentioned special charges, to my six children and heirs-at-law, namely: Eli Keiser, of Montgomeiy County, Maryland; Cyrus ³³⁷ Keiser, of said County and State; Ephraim Keiser, of Washington City; Levina Creamer, of said city; Leah Creamer, of said city; and Lydia Creamer, of Summit County, Ohio, to he equally divided between the said heirs, share and share alike.” By the sixth clause he says : Cí I do hereby direct and will that the share above-mentioned to go to my daughter, Levina Creamer, is hereby devised and bequeathed unto my executors, hereinafter named, in trust for the benefit of said Levina during her life, receiving her annual interest and income therefrom, the said share to be securely invested, as soon as declared, and after her death to he equally divided between her children.” A judgment was obtained in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia against Milton Creamer and Levina Creamer, his Avife, (upon their promissory notes) for the sum of three hundred and ninety-five dollars and ninety-eight cents ($395.98). Upon a transcript of the record of that judgment, an attachment was issued out of the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, and Avas laid in the hands of the appellees, as garnishees of Milton and Levina Creamer.

The garnishees were duly summoned, and pleaded nulla bona, and the case was tried on the issue joined thereon. At the trial it Avas conceded that the portion of Louis Keiser’s estate allotted to Levina Creamer for life, and invested by the trustees under the will, amounted to seventeen hundred and thirteen dollars and fifteen cents; and that at the time of the trial there Avas in the hands of the garnishees, due Levina Creamer, the sum of two hundred and five dollars and fifty-two cents as income. The only question in the case is whether this amount of income, in the hands of the trustees, is subject to attachment. That judgment has been recovered in accordance Avith section 2, of Article 45, of the Code of Public General Laws, and is enforceable under the same ³³⁸ section of the law of Husband and Wife, by attachment or otherwise as if the woman was not married.

In Warner, et al. vs. Rice and Knell, Trustees, &c., 66 Md., 440 , this Court emphatically declared that it was wholly against the policy of the law to allow property, whether legal or equitable, to be fettered' by restraints upon alienation; and generally, the Court said: “Whenever property is subject to alienation by the owner, it is subject to his debts." This was the law of England, and had always been the law in this State; but in Smith & Son vs. Towers, Garnishee, 69 Md., 90 , a majority of this Court decided “that the founder of a trust may provide, in direct terms, that his property shall go to his beneficiary to the exclusion of his alienees, and to the exclusion of his creditors." In doing so