Stewart v. Strider
Stewart v. Strider
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the Court:
No questions of law are before us. The facts upon which the case must turn, briefly summarized, are that Stewart like many others, went down financially in the panic of 1893. lie was at that time a single man, the property in question being occupied by himself and Mrs. Thomas as a home. It should be
Mrs. Thomas was a widow, her husband having died several years previous, leaving her three or four hundred dollars. After her husband’s death, she conducted a dressmaking business for seven or eight years, which she testified netted her from twenty-five to thirty dollars per month. Between this period and the date of her purchase of the property, she taught sewing in the colored schools of the city, receiving at the time of giving her testimony, and for some years prior thereto, an annual salary of $1,030. She testified that out of her earnings she had saved the money with which she paid the $637.50 cash with which she purchased the property. We think it is-not improbable that she had saved this comparatively small amount in all these years. Nothing is apparent on the face of the transaction to label it with fraud. She held the property over nine years, and sold her equity in it to appellant for $1,000.
Appellant married Stewart June 24, 1902, five and one-half years after the purchase by Thomas; four years after the judgment here sought to be enforced had been obtained by plaintiff,, and four and one-half years before the consummation of the sálete Mrs. Stewart. The undisputed evidence is that Mrs. Stewart for twelve years prior to her marriage had been a teacher in the schools of the city, receiving an annual salary for the-first two years of $500, for the next two years of $550, and for the last eight years of $1,000. She testified that she purchased the property with money she had saved from her earnings. A
No effort was made to trace the consideration for either of these transactions to Stewart, other than by suspicion. The purchase by Mrs. Thomas is the one chiefly assailed, and yet she remained unmolested in the record ownership of the property for over nine years. It was upon her testimony that the judge below turned his decision. She was led through a tedious cross-examination covering about two hunred pages of the record, much of which related to matters wholly irrelevant to the issue, and, because of minor inconsistencies in her testimony, which she was called upon to correct in direct examination, it is insisted that she is discredited. Her bank accounts were produced, which she testified had been attended to by her brother, who had attended to all of her business affairs, not unusual when, as she testified, she was engaged in her school work during banking hours. Her deposits were reasonably accounted for. Checks were signed by her, and the business was transacted in her name. Much is made of the fact that, after a day of cross-examination, she made a mistake in giving the location of one of the banks with which she had transacted business several years before, and could not tell the exact amount of her first deposit. Titles cannot be disturbed upon such trifling inconsistencies. It also appeared that during her ownership of the property portions of the house were rented from time to time. While her brother attended largely to this business, the evidence fairly shows that the rents were paid to her. Much suspicion is attempted to be thrown around the fact that all of these transactions of Mrs. Thomas were conducted by Stewart. He had been a business man of wide experience, and we think it was natural, since her time was occupied in the schools, and he was familiar with all the transactions leading up to the purchase of the property, that she should not only have him attend to the details of the purchase, but attend to her business generally. He was her brother, single, and the only man
Mrs. Stewart is assailed for not producing her brother in Chicago to corroborate her statement to the effect that she received from him a large portion of the purchase money. Her evidence upon this point is undisputed. She is defending her title. The burden is heavily upon the plaintiff. If she testified falsely, her brother was available for the plaintiff. Hntil her testimony on this point had been contradicted, she needed no corroboration.
It should be remembered that the material evidence upon which Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Stewart rely to sustain the bona tides of these transactions is open to investigation. They testified to receiving their money from the proceeds of their industry ás teachers in the public schools, and gave the length of service and the salaries received, all of which could be corroborated from the records of the District. They gave the names of the persons with whom they transacted business, who were available to plaintiff in rebuttal. Mrs. Thomas gave in detail the names of the roomers who had occupied the house during her ownership, and only one was produced to impeach her testimony, while a number corroborated her statements. All of this was available to plaintiff, and, since it was not produced, we must assume that the testimony is true.
But it is urged that Stewart, during the period when the title to the property was in the name of Mrs. Thomas, testified in minor suits that the property was his, and on other occa sions so referred to the property. In the face of the evidence; tracing the consideration to Mrs. Thomas, and the total failure» to trace it to Stewart, it is difficult to understand just how theso statements, made by him out of her presence, and in connection with transactions which did not concern her, could be given effective consideration in an action to defeat her title.
.■ The decree is reversed, with costs, and the cause is remand» -d with instructions to dismiss the bill. Reversed,
Reference
- Full Case Name
- STEWART v. STRIDER
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- Creditors’ Suits; Fraudulent Conveyances; Evidence. 1. A decree of the lower court which subjected a lot improved by a dwelling house, to the payment of a judgment at the suit of the judgment creditor, was reversed, and the bill of complaint ordered to be dismissed, where it appeared, among other things, that two years before the judgment was obtained, the property, which had been owned by the judgment debtor, was sold under a deed of trust and bought in by the holder of the indebtedness secured thereby, for $6,900; that the latter, four months later, sold the property for $6,637.50 to a sister of the debtor, who paid $637.50 on the purchase price, and gave a deed of trust on the property for the balance; that thereafter the property was improved by the expenditure thereon of about $1,500, and other deeds of trust placed upon it for $7,850, with the proceeds of which the former trust and expenses of improvement were paid; that nine years thereafter a sister of the judgment debtor sold the property to the debtor’s wife, who paid $1,000 on account of the purchase price, and assumed the existing trusts, interest, and taxes, making the total purchase price $9,030.51; that the conveyances to the sister and wife of the holder were assailed by the judgment creditor upon the ground that the real consideration for the purchase by the sister was furnished by the debtor, and that, in compliance with a secret agreement between her and the debtor, the subsequent conveyance was made to the wife, whom he had married several years after the sister acquired title; that the sister and wife testified that they had received much of the money with which they made their purchases from their salaries as public school teachers and from roomers, but that their evidence, though of a character readily subject to contradiction if untrue, was not attempted to be rebutted by the complainant. 2. In a judgment creditors’ suit to subject real estate in the name of a person other than the judgment debtor, to the payment of the judgment, declarations by the judgment debtor that the property belonged to him, not made in the presence of such other person, are not binding upon the latter.