Midland Life Insurance v. New England Securities Co.
Midland Life Insurance v. New England Securities Co.
Opinion of the Court
The opinion of the court was delivered by
The action was one to recover on a promissory note and to foreclose a mortgage. The plaintiff was defeated, and appeals.
The facts are substantially these: John Lloyd was the owner of considerable real estate in Franklin county. He had a wife and four sons. In order to provide for distribution of his property at death, he executed a will in which he devised to each of his sons a
Following the death of Mr. Lloyd it was ascertained that there was a blanket mortgage on his real estate for which no provision had been made for payment. The situation resulted in the execution of a contract between the widow and the four sons by the terms of which it was agreed that each of the sons should pay to the trustee the sum of $62.50 quarterly; that the trustee use the money, together with what he realized from the sale of the personal property, to pay the mortgage upon the land, and that whatever was remaining should become part of the trust fund mentioned by the deceased in his will. It was the purpose of the contract that each of the sons should contribute equally to this fund. Accordingly each son made a mortgage upon the land devised to him by the father, to the trustee, to secure the payment of the $250 per year so long as the mother should live. The provisions with relation to the mortgage and pledge were identical for each of the four sons.
After a time the defendant, Walter Lloyd, made default in payments to the trustee. The original contract between the mother and the sons was of record, but despite that and without the consent of the other brothers or the trustee, Walter Lloyd, his wife and his mother, executed a note and mortgage on the land in controversy to the New England Securities Company, which was sold and assigned to the plaintiff. The plaintiff seeks to foreclose such mortgage on the theory that it supersedes the original trust agree-ment entered into by Walter Lloyd with his mother, his brothers and the trustee. Fred Fockele, the trustee, answered in the action, setting upe the trust agreement. The court decreed to him a lien prior to the lien of the plaintiff’s mortgage.
The plaintiff contends that the court erred because when the mother executed plaintiff’s mortgage she conveyed her interest in the real estate in question and consented to the priority of the plaintiff’s mortgage over the lien of the trustee. It is argued that the court had jurisdiction to do complete equity between the
The purpose of the entire transaction was to place upon the four sons of John Lloyd the legal obligation of providing the fund first, for the support of their mother, and second, for a final distribution among themselves at her death. Each of the sons was interested in the matter in several ways. He was first interested in making his quarterly payments. No one of these quarterly payments would be sufficient to provide a fund adequate for the purpose of the trust, and so each must make them, and each in turn was interested in seeing that the others shared the burden of the trust. Each was interested, also, in seeing that the terms of the trust as applied to all four were faithfully carried out, because at the death of the mother each son would own one-fourth of whatever amount was left in the trust fund. Under the arrangement Mr. Fockele was trustee not only for Mrs. Lloyd but for the entire family. He
Numerous authorities cited and relied upon by plaintiff are not, in our opinion, applicable to the facts before us. We think the trial court reached a correct conclusion.
The judgment is affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.