Six score and four years ago, our New York Court of Appeals determined that a slayer should not acquire property by his own crime.1 Elmer Palmer was thus disqualified from receiving the farm under his grandfather’s will having poisoned him to accelerate the bequest and prevent its planned revocation.
In the Riggs v. Palmer case, the “slayer rule” was adopted based upon fundamental principles of equity. The court held that equity trumped the strict letter of the law under which Elmer would take the farm pursuant to a valid will. The majority in Riggs relied upon a presumed legislative intent to not give effect to such a will provision. It asked rhetorically, “If the law-makers could, as to this case, be consulted, would they say that they intended by their general language that the property of a testator or of an ancestor should pass to one who had taken his life for the express purpose of getting his property?”2
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