Dobbins v. Humphreys

70 S.W. 815, 171 Mo. 198, 1902 Mo. LEXIS 236
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedDecember 24, 1902
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 70 S.W. 815 (Dobbins v. Humphreys) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Dobbins v. Humphreys, 70 S.W. 815, 171 Mo. 198, 1902 Mo. LEXIS 236 (Mo. Ct. App. 1902).

Opinion

MARSHALL, J.

This is a suit under the statute for the partition of certain real estate in Sullivan •county, owned by Thomas Dobbins, who died, intestate, on May 23, 1896. The parties are his children. The plaintiff claims one-thirteenth part of the property. The principal contention of the defendants is that the plaintiff received advancements from their father amounting to more than his aliquot share of the land here involved, and hence he is not entitled to any further part of the estate. The plaintiff claims that the personal property is more than sufficient to pay all of the debts of the estate, and that his distributive share of the personalty is more than enough to extinguish the advancements he received, and therefore he is now entitled to his part of the realty. The plaintiff admits he received advancements, but claims they do not amount to more than thirty-five or thirty-six hundred dollars. The case was tried before the court, no instructions were asked or given, and no finding of facts asked, but a very elaborate and exhaustive one was made by the court, and it is preserved in the record. The court found that the personalty remaining in the bands of the administrators is only sufficient to pay the taxes and the probate fees; that the aggregate value of the estate, ascertained by adding together the advancements made by the father in his lifetime, the payments made by the administrators on distribution, and [202]*202the value of the land here sought to he partitioned, is $59,298.27; that the distributive share of each child is $4,561.40, and that the plaintiff has received advancements aggregating $5,012.40, which is $451 in excess of his distributive share, and therefore he is not entitled to any part of this realty, and that as the other heirs do not want the land partitioned, the bill was dismissed. From this judgment the plaintiff appealed.

I.

This is an action under the statute for the partition of realty. It is not a proceeding in equity for the partition of an equitable estate. [Reed v. Robertson, 45 Mo. 580.] The evidence as to the amount of advancements received by the plaintiff is conflicting. The plaintiff admitted that he. received thirty-five or thirty-six hundred dollars. The defendants introduced evidence tending to show that he received $5,012.40. The court found that the amount he received was $5,012.40. Under these circumstances it is not the practice of this court to disturb the judgment of the trial court on a question of fact. [James v. Insurance Co., 148 Mo. 1.]

But aside from this rule there is abundant and very persuasive evidence showing that the finding of the court is correct. In the first place, there is a statement signed by the plaintiff himself showing that on December 9, 1882, he owed his father $3,412.40, which sum is therein shown to be made up of the following items:

80 acres land at $20 per acre...............$1,600.00

14 acres land at $11 per acre............... 154.00

2 Horses................................. 160.00

1 Cow............'....................... ,30.00

$1,944.00

Cash paid................................ 1,468.40

$3,412.40

[203]*203The statement further shows that the plaintiff had received no deed to the.said land. The evidence shows, however, that afterwards, on November 9, 1885, his father deeded him one hundred and seventy-four acres, of which the eighty-acre and fourteen-acre tracts were part. The consideration specified in the deed is thirty-three hundred ami fifty-four dollars, that is, it is just sixteen hundred dollars more than the $1,600 plus the $154 mentioned in the plaintiff’s said statement of his indebtedness to his father on account of the land there mentioned. This $1,600 evidently represents the value of the additional eighty acres, valued at twenty dollars an acre, then conveyed to the plaintiff, and this $1,600 arising on November 9, 1885, added to the $3,412.40, admitted by the plaintiff in his statement of December 9, 1882, to be due his father, makes his indebtedness to his father $5,012.40, which is the exact amount found by the trial court to be due. This alone is enough not only to support the judgment but to show the correctness of the judgment.

The defendants showed that their father kept accurate accounts, on separate slips of paper, of advancements he made to each of his children, and that those slips were found among his papers. The defendants offered, and the court admitted in evidence, the following slip:

“My son George Dobbins has drawn from my estate up to the first of July, 1883, $4,012.40 in land and money, but on said land owes 1,000 thousand to be paid to me or heirs at 6 per cent owing to his having drawn this amount over his share his note to be drawn on the first day of March in 1883.”

The plaintiff contends that the trial court misconstrued this document, and erred in holding that the one thousand dollars, for which a note was to be given, was an additional indebtedness to the four thousand and twelve dollars and forty cents.

The infirmity underlying this contention is that there is nothing in this record to show that the court placed such a construction upon the paper. The find[204]*204ing of facts does not bear out this contention nor indicate in any way that the court reached its conclusion that the plaintiff had received advancements to the amount of $5,012.40 by placing such a construction upon this paper. In fact, the only basis for the contention is that by adding the one thousand dollars mentioned in the paper, for which a note was to be given, to the $4,012.40 mentioned therein, makes a total of $5,012.40, which is the exact amount found by the court to have been received by the plaintiff. This is not a sufficient basis upon which to adjudge the trial court guilty of error. Especially is this true when it is observed that the amount the plaintiff admitted in his statement he owed his father, added to the value of the eighty acres of land afterwards deeded to him by his father — estimating such value at twenty dollars an acre, that being the value placed by the plaintiff, in his statement, on the first eighty acres — produces the same result, to-wit, $5,012.40. The trial court may have proceeded upon this basis and not upon the alleged mistaken construction of the memorandum or slip referred to. Inasmuch as this may have been the process employed by the court in reaching its judgment, and inasmuch as there is ample evidence to support the judgment outside of this slip, the action of the court in admitting the slip in-evidence, even if it was erroneous, does not constitute reversible error, for the case was not tried by a jury whom it might be argued were influenced by the testimony claimed to-be improperly in the case.

It is further contended that as it is always a question of intention whether money or property that a parent has turned over to a child-was a gift or an advancement (Ray v. Loper, 65 Mo. 473, Ladd v. Stephens, 147 Mo. 1. c. 334); and that inasmuch as the deed to the land recites a money consideration and there is no evidence showing that the plaintiff did not pay to his father the consideration mentioned in the deed, it must be conclusively taken as the established fact that the second eighty acres was a purchase and not an advancement.

[205]

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Bluebook (online)
70 S.W. 815, 171 Mo. 198, 1902 Mo. LEXIS 236, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/dobbins-v-humphreys-moctapp-1902.