The hand-book of the law of legacies / containing a statement of the nature of legacies, and the accidents to which they are subjects; together with the rights of legatees, and the causes and manner of the ademption, cumulation, and abatement of their bequests

by Anonymous

CHAPTER IV.

LEGACIES—GENERAL, SPECIFIC, LAPSED,
VESTED, DEMONSTRATIVE.

Legacies are gifts of the property of a deceased person to his surviving friends or relatives, expressed in the deed or will by which his disposable property is governed after death. They are styled general when a certain amount of property is bequeathed to a particular person, without any certain fund being appropriated for its payment. They are specific when the particular things are named, as well as the particular persons to whom those things are bequeathed. Legacies lapse, or are lost to the party or his representatives, or friends, when some particular condition is annexed to the bequest, which condition has not, or cannot be, either through negligence or impossibility, complied with. They are, on the contrary, vested, or made the property de jure of the party to whom they are left, when, through his own act or without it, certain conditions, which were predicated by the terms of the will, have been fulfilled; although the legatee may not come into possession of his rights for years perhaps after the death of the testator. Farther, legacies are demonstrative when it is evident that, under a certain set of circumstances, certain persons are intended to inherit certain portions of property, and those certain circumstances arise by which the demonstrative legatees acquire their rights. These several terms will be clearer when they are farther explained and illustrated by examples, to which we will immediately proceed.