Langroise

Appellant is the executor of the estate of James McDonald, Jr., who died in Idaho on July 2, 1936. Appellee Cummings presented a claim against the estate and upon its disallowance he sued, recovering a judgment from which the executor appeals.

The estate consists of McDonald’s share in a testamentary trust set up by his father, James McDonald, Sr., who died in 1915. The instruments creating the testamentary trust provided for the payment of an annuity to the son, and as those instruments were later construed McDonald was entitled to receive currently all the income accruing to his undivided half interest in the corpus. 1 This undivided interest was not to be turned over to him until 1943. The corpus of the trust, valued at several million dollars, was invested largely in stocks and bonds.

Prior to 1931 McDonald, Jr., became heavily indebted. To secure some of these debts he had made assignments of the income and annuities and in some instances the assignments included his share of the trust corpus itself. At least one creditor who had obtained judgment was threatening to levy execution upon the share, and there were threats of action from other quarters. Efforts of McDonald to…