Day v. Maynard

180 S.W.2d 80, 297 Ky. 317, 1944 Ky. LEXIS 723
CourtCourt of Appeals of Kentucky (pre-1976)
DecidedApril 28, 1944
StatusPublished

This text of 180 S.W.2d 80 (Day v. Maynard) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Kentucky (pre-1976) primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Day v. Maynard, 180 S.W.2d 80, 297 Ky. 317, 1944 Ky. LEXIS 723 (Ky. 1944).

Opinion

Opinion op the Court by

Judge Thomas

Affirming.

Sometime prior to 1924, Arminta Maynard died intestate, a resident of Pike County. It appears that her husband predeceased her, and at the time of her death she owned a tract of land in Pike County which is described in the record by corners and lines connecting them, but no courses o.r distances are given and for which reason we áre unable to ascertain the acreage of the tract.

She left surviving her six children, who, together with two grandchildren, were her only heirs, and which made each heir the owner of a one-seventh undivided interest in the entire tract, the two grandchildren jointly inheriting their deceased parents’ one-seventh interest. Appellant, Effie P. Day, and appellee, R. L. Maynard, are two of the surviving heirs of their mother, and the appellant, Thomas L. Day, is the son of his co-appellant, Effie P. Day.

In 1924, Effie P. Day and her then living husband, P. W. Day, borrowed from the appellee, R. L. Maynard, $500 and executed their joint note to him for that amount. Later, and after the death of P. W. Day, his surviving widow, Effie P. Day, borrowed from the Pike-ville National Bank $350 for which amount she executed her note and a mortgage on her then undivided inherited’ interest in the tract of land to secure that debt which was stated in the mortgage to be a three-fourteenths. On June 18, 1929, the appellee, R. L. Maynard, filed an action in the Pike circuit court against P. W. Day and his wife, Effie P. Day, to recover judgment on the note they had executed to him to which no answer was filed, and a judgment by default was rendered in favor of plaintiff in that action. Later defendants therein appeared and entered motion to set aside the default judgment with a tendered answer by Effie P. Day in which she alleged that the note to her brother, the appellee, was executed for a debt exclusively one of her husband’s and that she had signed the note only as his surety.

On a later date a motion was made by an attorney, who had filed the tendered answer — and who made the motion to set aside the default judgment — to withdraw the answer and for the default judgment' to be rein *319 stated upon conditions that no execution issue until the expiration of ninety days-. Those motions were sustained and the default judgment reinstated and the action was stricken from the docket. On February 21, 1938, an execution was raised on that judgment and levied by the sheriff on all of the then undivided interest of Effie P. Day in and to her mother’s tract of land. The execution, with the levy endorsed thereon, was returned to the office, of the circuit court clerk without any attempt to make sale thereunder because of the mortgage which had been executed to the Pikeville National Bank. 'Whereupon appellee, the plaintiff in the levied execution, filed an equity action in the same court against appellant, Effie P. Day, and the Pikeville National Bank in which he alleged the foregoing facts and sought a sale of the undivided interest of Effie P. Day, upon which his execution had been levied. The Bank answered setting up its debt and asserting its mortgage lien on three-fourteenths interest of Effie P. Day in and to the tract of land which was the extent of the interest covered by its mortgage.

In 1929, the instant plaintiff, and appellant, Thomas L. Day, whom we have said is the son of Effie P. Day, purchased the one-seventh interest of Leslie Maynard, one of the heirs of Arminta Maynard, and in 1931, two years after he made that purchase, he conveyed that one-seventh interest to his mother for a recited consideration of $500. Those two deeds were put to record soon after their execution. In the meantime, and before Robert L. Maynard levied his execution, Effie P. Day had acquired the interest of one of the grandchildren of Arminta Maynard which with her inherited one-seventh made her the owner of three-fourteenths undivided interest in the entire tract; but after she acquired the one-seventh, or two-fourteenths, undivided interest from her -son, Thomas L. Day, she then owned five-fourteenths undivided interest in the entire tract, and it was that interest upon which the execution in favor of R. L. Maynard was levied .and which fact was averred in his petition.

Effie P. Day demurred to the equity petition of her brother which the court overruled, and she having declined to plead further, judgment was rendered ordering the sale of her five-fourteenths undivided interest which she then owned in her mother’s land and which *320 was directed to be made by the Master Commissioner. It was also adjudged that the Bank had a superior lien on three-fourteenths of Effie P. Day’s interest to satisfy its mortgage which was superior to the execution lien of appellee, R. L. Maynard. That judgment erroneously described the interest upon which R. L. Maynard’s execution was levied limiting it to only three-fourteenths, the same estate that was mortgaged to the Bank, when in truth his levy had been made — as was shown by the record — upon the additional two-fourteenths undivided interest that she had purchased from her son, the appellant, Thomas L. Day. So, the plaintiff in that equity action (R. L. Maynard) gave notice to Effie P. Day that he would on a named day move the court to correct the judgment so as to include the entire interest upon which his execution had been levied. The court sustained that motion and made the correction in accordance with the facts appearing in the record. The Commissioner sold the land, pursuant to the corrected judgment, and R. L. Maynard purchased the five-fourteenths interest of Effie P. Day at the Commissioner’s sale for the price of $1,025.31, which was the aggregate amount of his debt and the one of the Pikeville National Bank, plus costs. That sale by the Commissioner was reported and confirmed and deed ordered to be made to the purchaser, he having satisfied the debt of the Bank as well as his judgment against his sister, Effie P. Day. In the meantime R. L. Maynard acquired the interest of all of the other heirs except two, and after his decretal purchase he and those two agreed upon a division of the entire tract in proportion to their respective interests, his equity action having, in the meantime, been stricken from the docket.

On January 6, 1941, the instant action was filed by Thomas L. Day in the same court against his mother; his uncle, R. L. Maynard, and three other of the Maynard heirs, seeking to set. aside the deed, supra, that he executed to his mother in 1931, on the ground that his father had by persuasion induced him to make it in order to preserve it and to keep him from squandering it, since he at that time indulged in the use of alcoholic liquors and also, as it appears in proof, because he had indulged relationships with a woman whom he anticipated might sue him and recover a judgment. The latter fact was not alleged in the pleadings but appears from the tes *321 timony of Effie P. Day. Plaintiff alleged that no consideration was paid to him by his mother and that he did not know that the deed he executed to her had ever been recorded. He, however, did not specifically allege that his uncle, R. L. Maynard, knew any of the conditions upon which he conveyed his interest to his mother, and there is no proof that any such knowledge was possessed by the uncle.

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180 S.W.2d 80, 297 Ky. 317, 1944 Ky. LEXIS 723, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/day-v-maynard-kyctapphigh-1944.