The N. Y. Law Journal of the 13th inst. reports a decision rendered the day before by Surrogate Foley in connection with the “Estate of Charles Freeman,” in which an effort was made to have a provision of a will adjudged void, as against public policy, in which testator left legacies to two daughters, provided they married a person of the Jewish faith, but directing payment of the legacy to them on attaining the age of 30, if then unmarried.
The Surrogate declined to pass on the legality of the provision, because academic, as marriage to a non-Jew might never occur. No reference was made in the opinion to general authorities sustaining such conditions, nor to an earlier decision of the N. Y. Appellate Division in Davis v. Davis 85 App. Div. 401, rendered in 1901, where testator’s will had provided that if any of his grandchildren should renounce the Hebrew faith, they should be disinherited. While reversing the lower court, which had adjudged the clause illegal, the Appellate Division did not content itself with basing its decision on the ground that the question was academic, but all five judges concurred in the opinion of Justice Jenks, who said:
“If the question were necessarily before the court for construction, I am not prepared to say that the clause is illegal. I think that it has never been directly adjudicated in this state. But in England, Hodgson v. Halford, L. R. 11 Ch. Div. 959, and Ex Parte Mary Dickson, 1 Sim. N. S. 37, are authorities which go far to sustain its validity. The latter authority is mentioned in Hogan v. Curtin, 88 N. Y. 162, 170, 42 Am. Rep. 244, in the learned discussion upon conditions and their validity, by Andrews, C. J.”
Under the name of Young Women’s League of Hias there has been organized in Brooklyn an Auxiliary of Young Women of the Hebrew Sheltering & Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). The organizers of the League are: Mrs. Irving H. Lurie and Mrs. Arthur L. Schur, the daughters of the late Leon Kamaiky who for many years was a Vice-President of Hias and the Chairman of the first Hias commission to Europe, and of Mrs. Leon Kamaiky, who is the President of the Rose N. Lesser Auxiliary and a director of Hias as well. The following officers were elected: Mrs. Irving H. Lurie. Chairman; Mrs. W. E. Friedman, Vice-Chairman; Mrs. Nathan Brooks, Treasurer; Mrs. Arthur L. Schur, Financial Secretary, and Mrs. Philip Elkind, Corresponding Secretary.
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