Board of Home Missions v. Lynch

Bond, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appeal in this case is from a decree holding a legacy in the will of the decedent, Joseph O. W. Perdue, to “Home and Foreign Missions in honor of the faith of my parents,”, to be too indefinite and uncertain in its designation of beneficiaries to be construed, by the aid of extrinsic evidence, to refer to the two organizations now appealing. The testator made in the first three items of his will three dispositions of shares of his stock in a bank, the Bank of Delmar. In the first a share was bequeathed to Mills Chapel of the Methodist Episcopal Church for keeping in order, by the use of the dividends, “the old Mills lot, where my wife is buried.” The second was a gift of another share to the Parsonburg Methodist Episcopal Church for keeping in order the burial grounds “where my parents are buried.” The next, or third item, now in question, reads in its entirety: “I direct my hereinafter named executor to sell the remainder of my Bank stock, either at public or private sale, and to divide the proceeds equally between Home and Foreign Missions, in honor of the faith of my parents.” The decree was passed on a bill filed by the executor named in the will, praying a construction of the third item and the direction of the court for distribution of the estate, and after answers filed and testimony taken.

It is unquestioned that a will must contain in itself some designation of the legatees intended. A court cannot furnish a designation from extrinsic evidence, for what is to be ascertained for the enforcement of a will is the meaning of the words used rather than the intention of the testator which might be found independently. Stein v. Safe Deposit & Trust Co., 127 Md. 206, 215 , 96 A. 349 ; Shapiro v. Howard, 113 Md. 360, 368 , 78 A. 58 . The court can pursue a reference in the will by some description or otherwise sufficient to lead to certainty in the designation, ¹¹⁹ but can do no more.

Miller, Construction of Wills, 131,. etc. And the designation or reference in this third item is slight. The court below concluded that the words indicated an intention to give to home and foreign missions generally, without reference to particular mission organizations. The general words “Home and Foreign Missions” were not thought to be made definite by the stated purpose that the gift should be in honor of the faith of the testator’s parents. “Faith” does not, as the court observed, necessarily mean a religious denomination; and the words “in honor of” do not necessarily mean “of” a faith. Domestic etc. Missionary Society v. Reynolds’ Excx., 9 Md. 341 ; Henry Watson Children’s Aid Society v. Johnston, 58 Md. 139 .

But