Palmer v. Griswold
Palmer v. Griswold
Opinion of the Court
The opinion of the court was delivered by
The action was in two counts — one to quiet title to real estate and one to reform a deed. Judgment was for plaintiffs on the first count. Defendants appeal.
O. H. Palmer died intestate in 1897,‘seized of a quarter section of land in Elk county, Kansas. He left as his sole heirs at law his widow, Miranda H. Palmer, and five adult children by a former marriage.
A short time after the death of Mr. Palmer, Mrs. Palmer and the children arranged a partition of the land between themselves. They agreed that Mrs. Palmer should have a life estate in the sixty acres of the farm where the improvements were and the children should have the hundred acres that had no improvements. They attempted to carry this arrangement into effect by means of deeds. The children and Mrs. Palmer all joined in one deed conveying the hundred acres in fee simple to one of the children who- had made settlement
Immediately after this exchange of deeds Mrs. Palmer leased her sixty acres to one of the children and continued to -live there with him until she died.
Pier death occurred on March 20, 1928, she dying intestate as to the real property. After her death her brothers and sisters set up a claim to the sixty acres on account of being her only heirs at law. This claim caused all of the living children and the heirs of the deceased to file this action to quiet their title to the sixty acres and to reform the deed from the children to Mrs. Palmer.
Trial was to the court, who made findings of fact about as they have been detailed here. The court refused to reform the deeds, but found:
“That the plaintiffs under the evidence in this case have and own the whole equitable title in the land in controversy and are entitled to have their title quieted as against all the defendants herein.”
Judgment was entered accordingly.
When O. H. Palmer died the land in question passed an undivided one-half to his widow and an undivided one-half to the children. When the conveyance was made by Mrs. Palmer and the children of the hundred acres to one of the children, they all conveyed whatever title they had to that particular piece of real estate to the grantee. By that deed, however, nothing was changed as to the title to the sixty acres. That still belonged an undivided one-half to Mrs. Palmer and an undivided one-half to the children. What did the deed to Mrs. Palmer actually convey? It was given by the Palmer children. It purported to convey the entire estate under the sixty acres, but since they only owned an undivided one-half of it their deed only conveyed that. (18 C. J. 309.)
The fact that this deed purported to convey the entire sixty acres is meaningless as respects the one-half interest that the grantors in the deed did not own. The deed attempted to limit the estate that Mrs. Palmer took to a life estate. That limitation could and did operate on the undivided one-half that the grantors owned — hence
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.