Reynolds v. Prestidge
Reynolds v. Prestidge
Opinion of the Court
M. M. Prestidge died in Limestone county, Tex., January 24, 1900. He was survived by his wife, Cordelia Pres-tidge, and by six children, whose respective names were Mrs. Nannie Price (a married daughter), William Prestidge, Dallas Pres-tidge, Marvin Prestidge, Steve Prestidge, and Clell Prestidge. The first named five were children of a marriage previous to that with Cordelia Prestidge, and the last named, Clell, was a son by Cordelia Prestidge.
M. M. Prestidge left a will dated November 17; 1899, which was duly probated in the county court of Limestone county by judgment dated February 26, 1900. By this will he bequeathed all his estate, consisting of real and personal property, to the above-named surviving wife and children. Only two items of the will are material to a consideration of this case. They are the first and seventh. By the first item a life estate in 205 acres of land was passed to the wife Cordelia, with remainder in fee to Clell at her death, provided that in the event of Clell’s death preceding Cordelia’s then at her death this land was to be divided equally among the children surviving her. The seventh item of the will was as follows:
“I give and bequeath to my surviving children all of the residue of my estate, real, personal and mixed to be equally divided between them, or should one of my children die before my demise, and leave one or more children, then it or they shall have the one child’s part, at my death.”
After the will had been probated a suit for partition of the estate was filed by Cordelia Prestidge jointly with the guardian of Dallas Prestidge, Marvin Prestidge, Steve Prestidge, minors, Nannie Price, joined pro forma hy her husband and Clell Prestidge, a minor, by his next friend, Mrs. Cordelia Prestidge, against B. H. Oates (who seems to have - become administrator of M. M. Pres-tidge’s estate) and William Prestidge. The petition alleged that M. M. Prestidge, just prior to his death, called upon John Morgan to write his will so as to give Cordelia Pres-tidge a life estate in 205 acres of land with remaindér to his son, Clell Prestidge, by her, and all the remaining real estate to his other five children, and that Morgan by mistake wrote the will so as to dispose of the lands as they were disposed of in items 1 and 7 of the will, which we have stated above. The petition prayed that the will be reformed and construed so that Clell Prestidge should take none of the land except the remainder in the 205 acres upon the death of his mother, Cordelia Prestidge, and that all the rest of the land belonging to the estate be given to the other five children. Thereafter, in 1902, the county court of Limestone county entered a final judgment of partition, disposing of the land in conformity with the prayer of this petition.
Clell Prestidge became 21 years old on the 22d day of October, 1917, and within 2 years thereafter filed the suit before us on this appeal. This was a suit for a writ of certiorari to the county court of Limestone county to “correct, atínul, hold for naught and revise” the proceedings of the county court in 1902, distributing the.lands of M. M. Prestidge, so as to award to Clell Prestidge , one-sixth of the real estate awarded to the other five children.
The plaintiffs in error, several in number, have acquired by purchase their respective titles to the various tracts of land distributed by the 1902 decree of the county court to the five children by the first marriage of M. M. Prestidge. They were all served with citation, and answered by first filing pleas in abatement embodying the following objections: First, that they were neither necessary nor proper parties to the suit, because they were not parties to the probate proceedings, the review and revision of which was sought in this suit; and, second, that there was a misjoinder of causes of action because the plaintiff sought to have probate orders in the county -court relating to M. M. Pres-tidge’s estate revised and reversed, and at the same time in this, the same suit, also sought to have the title of real estate divested out of defendants and vested in himself. The first and second assignments of error present these pleas, and complain of the court’s refusal to sustain them.
Article 733, Revised Civil Statutes, provides that — ■
“Any person interested in the estate of a decedent or ward may have the proceedings of the county court therein revised and corrected at any time within two years after such proceedings were had, and not afterwards; provided, that persons non compos mentis, infants and femes covert shall have two years after the removal of their respective disabilities within which to apply for such revision and correction.”
Article 734 provides that—
“All applications for the writ of certiorari to the county court shall be made to the district court, or a judge thereof. It shall state the names and residences of the parties adversely interested, and shall distinctly set forth the error in the proceeding sought to be revised.”
Article 739 provides that when the writ is issued the clerk shall forthwith issue a citation, as in ordinary cases, for the party named in the application as being adversely interested in the proceedings sought to be revised. The proceedings in this ease with reference to plaintiffs in error are supported by the foregoing statutory provisions. Williams v. Steele, 101 Tex. 382, 108 S. W. 155; Connell v. Chandler et al., 11 Tex. 249; Heaton v. Buhler, 60 Tex. Civ. App. 423, 127 S. W. 1079; Norris v. Duncan, 21 Tex. 594.
In the case of Connell v. Chandler et al., supra, the Supreme Court in passing upon a plea of misjoinder of parties under facts similar to those here presented said;
“The objection that there was a misjoinder of parties is not tenable. It was proposed to bring in question the validity of the sale under which the defendant Fuller purchased. And it ' was certainly proper to make him a party to a proceeding in which his rights were to become directly the subject of adjudication. The rule is that all the parties in interest, and whose rights are to be directly affected by the decree, must be made parties, in order that the court may be enabled to render a decree which shall do ample and complete justice to all, and which shall bind all.”
We, of course, recognize the general rule that a minor is bound, just as any other litigant is, by the judgment in a suit to which it is a party represented by a next friend, in the absence of fraud, collusion, or mistake on the part of the next friend. But we do not believe that rule can be invoked in bar of the right to maintain this suit, under the facts revealed with reference to the partition judgment, in the petition for which Clell Prestidge appears by next friend as a plaintiff. The suit was not instituted to establish any right of his then existing which was denied by any other party to it. Neither was it instituted to acquire anything from any other party. No interest of any kind adverse to the claim of any other party was asserted. Instead of the purpose of the suit being to gain something for Mm, its purpose was to deprive him of something he already had. While the petition declares the suit to have been brought in his name, it does not appear therefrom that it was brought in his behalf. On the contrary, the petition expressly asserts that the suit is against his interests, and that while it seeks to deprive him of valuable property rights in the estate, it calls for no yielding by any other party. The judgment followed the petition, and arbitrarily and illegally took from him what the will gave him, and added it to what the will had-given other parties. He alone was made by the judgment to sacrifice. His next friend, a party to the suit in her own behalf, sought nothing, gained nothing, and lost nothing by the suit. The other parties gained all Clell Prestidge lost. If there had been in the suit any element of compromise, and in a bona fide attempt to effectuate a compromise such judgment had been entered, the contention made by plaintiffs in error against the judgment in the instant case might be sound. The rule that a minor plaintiff is bound by a judgment sought by bis next friend in his behalf would then apply. But, as above indicated, the partition suit, while brought in his name, was not brought in his behalf; and the judgment entered was a deliberate and arbitrary effort to sacrifice his rights for the benefit of others. The whole partition proceeding was a transaction in quest of no gain for him, but was expressly to deprive him of property his legal title to which was not questioned. His mother, who as next friend named him as a plaintiff in the suit, was a party to the undertaking against him. Whatever her motive and however honest her purpose, we think the facts surrounding and the facts pervading the partition proceedings are such as to put the judgments attacked in the same category, so far as validity is concerned, with judgments obtained through the 'active fraud or collusion of a minor’s next friend. To hold otherwise would be to permit the form of the law to be used to subvert its spirit and defeat its purpose.
We find nothing in the record out of which arises any requirement that we reform the judgment of the court below with reference to costs, and we accordingly overrule the assignment of error challenging the judgment witli respect to costs.
The judgment is affirmed.
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Reference
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- REYNOLDS Et Al. v. PRESTIDGE
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