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

NATURE OF THE ASSENT.

The law has prescribed no particular form in which this assent shall be given, and a very slight intimation is held sufficient. Not only may the executor authorize the legatee to take possession of the bequest in direct terms, but indirect expressions, or relative acts, will have the same effect—anything, indeed, from which an intended permission can be construed. Thus, if the executor congratulate the legatee on his legacy, or if a specific legacy be left to any one, and the executor request him to keep or dispose of it, or if he in any way refer a third party to the legatee as proprietor of his legacy, or if he himself treat him, or treat with him as the proprietor. As for instance, where an executor requested the lease of an estate left under a will which he had to administer from a legatee, and accepted the lease which was granted in accordance with his request, it was held that he allowed the granter to be the proprietor of the estate which he had granted. An assent to an estate in remainder is an assent to the present estate, for a remainder can only be a continuation of an estate, and therefore a part of it. Whenever property, however, is so divided, that it has acquired two qualities, as is the case of land under a term for years, where there is the real property, and the chattel real arising out of it—the land and the rent—an assent to the legacy of one quality is no assent to the legacy of the other, and therefore, an assent to the legacy of the rent is no assent to the legacy of the land; but on the principle that the greater comprises the less, assent to the legacy of the land will carry assent to the legacy of the rent.