New York Court of Appeals
In the Matter of the Accounting of Bankers Trust Company, as Trustees Under the Will of John T. Waring…
July 13, 1937275 N.Y. 6
Summary
The Court held that the 1929 amendments to the Decedent Estate Law were not retroactive and therefore the class of "next of kin" for John T. Waring Jr. was limited to blood relatives as defined before September 1, 1930; consequently the widow of the son was not entitled to any share of the trust corpus. The lower courts' orders were reversed and the matter remanded to the Surrogate’s Court.