Nichols v. Nichols
Nichols v. Nichols
Opinion of the Court
Opinion by
This cause has been twice tried in the court below, and was before this court two years ago upon appeal from the first judgment, at which time the questions now raised were determined against the present appellant. At the first trial, as in the last, it appears to have been conceded that title to three tracts or parcels of land, one thereof containing 98 acres, another containing 27£ acres, and the third containing one half of an acre, was in one William Clark who, by will admitted to probate Nov. 6,1845, devised the same to his son, George W. Clark, and
At the last trial the evidence came quite up to the offers rejected at the first, and the evidence of a parol partition between the devisees of William Clark was substantially repeated. The judgment of the court below must, therefore, be affirmed, unless error can be found in the former judgment of this court. In pronouncing that judgment it was neither said nor assumed that the deed under which the defendants claim might be brushed aside hy the jury upon any other evidence than such as would justify a chancellor in declaring Dr. Nichols a trustee for his wife. Much significance was attached to the fact that upon the same day that Dr. Nichols received the conveyance of the interests of his wife’s brother and sister in the 98 acre tract, his wife and her brother conveyed their interests in the other lands to the husband of their sister, Elias Griffin, who in turn conveyed another tract to the brother, each deed reciting a consideration of $1,000. And why should not these circumstances have a well-nigh controlling effect ? It is well settled that when several instruments in pari materia are executed by the same parties at or about the same time they are to be treated as one transaction, and, as was said in Cummings v. Antes, 19 Pa. 287, “we cannot separate what the parties have joined and look for their understanding and intentions in one instrument •when they have employed three to express them.” The subject of two of these conveyances was the estate held in common by the parties thereto, and that of the third was other land assumed by the parties to be equal in value to one half of the common estate. Now, if the grantee in each of the first two conveyances had been one of the three tenants in common instead of the husband of such tenant, and a sum of money equal to one half of the value of the several properties conveyed had been paid by the two grantees to the third tenant, the court
The judgment is affirmed.
Reference
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- Parol partition—Conveyance to husband—Consideration—Resulting trust —Evidence. A, B and C, as residuary legatees of their father, owned certain land. B and C conveyed a portion of it to the husband of A, for an expressed consideration of $1,000. On the same day A and C conveyed, for the same expressed consideration, the rest of the land to the husband of B, and B conveyed certain other real estate to C, also for the same expressed consideration: In ejectment after the death of A and her husband, the above deeds, together with evidence of a previous parol partition alloting to A the land conveyed to her husband, and admissions by the husband, after the deed was made, that the land belonged to his wife, are sufficient to establish a resulting trust in favor of the wife. In such a ease the evidence necessary to establish the resulting trust must be sufficient to justify a chancellor in decreeing the husband a trustee for his wife. Instruments in pari materia. When several instruments in pari materia are executed by the same parties, at or about the same time, they are to be treated as one transaction ; and, therefore, the said three deeds are to be considered together. Married women—Husband dealing with estate of wife. The law looks with such extreme jealousy upon all transactions in which a husband deals with the estate of his wife, that it will, upon very slight evidence, cast upon him the burden of showing that he has derived no advantage therefrom. If upon the face of the transaction, as shown by the said three deeds, it was not a partition, very slight evidence was sufficient to cast upon those claiming under the husband the burden of showing that each deed was not the consideration of the other.