Grimes v. Miller

121 S.W. 21, 221 Mo. 636, 1909 Mo. LEXIS 165
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedJune 29, 1909
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 121 S.W. 21 (Grimes v. Miller) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Grimes v. Miller, 121 S.W. 21, 221 Mo. 636, 1909 Mo. LEXIS 165 (Mo. 1909).

Opinion

GANTT, P. J.

This is an action in two counts, the first being ejectment for possession of an undivided one-fourth of the northeast quarter of the northeast quarter of section 26, township 56, range 35, all in Buchanan county, Missouri. The ouster was laid on the 19th of January, Í9Ó01. The second count "was one for partition of the same land.

[639]*639It was admitted that the plaintiff was the son of Mahala Grimes and that the said Mahala Grimes at the time of her death owned said real estate, and that if plaintiff had any interest it was a one-fonrth interest, the only evidence offered by plaintiff being ns to the value of the monthly rents and profits. It appeared from the evidence offered by the defendant that in 1896 a partition of the premises was had among all the heirs of Mahala Grimes, deceased, except the plaintiff herein, and he was not a party to said partition suit. In that action the premises were divided in kind and the defendant became the owner of the interest of the distributees and heirs by deeds from them about a year after that partition was made. Upon this state of facts the circuit court rendered judgment for possession of the one-fourth interest in said property to which he was entitled as the son of Mahala Grimes. The cause then proceeded on the second count of the petition and the same evidence and the same admissions were offered together with the judgment in ejectment on the first count. And thereupon the court rendered a decree of partition adjudging plaintiff was entitled to one undivided one-fourth of the said premises and the defendant three-fourths. It was agreed and the court so adjudged that the lands could not be divided in kind without injury to the rights of the parties and accordingly it was ordered sold and the proceeds divided according to the rights of the parties as adjudged. From that judgment the defendants have appealed.

I. Section 593, Revised Statutes 1899', provides that “the plaintiff may unite in the same petition several causes of action whether they be such as have heretofore been denominated legal or. equitable or both, where they all arise out of: first, the same transaction or transactions connected with the same subject of action.” The subject-matter of this action is the [640]*640land and the parties are the same and we can see no reason why the count in ejectment was not properly joined with the count in partition. [Morrison v. Herrington, 120 Mo. 665; Lane v. Dowd, 172 Mo. l. c. 174; Scarborough v. Smith, 18 Kansas 399.] Indeed it seems too plain for discussion that where an heir is denied recognition in the division of his ancestor’s land he has no other recourse except to bring his action in ejectment to compel a recognition of his right, and if he succeeds therein, there is no reason why he should not proceed at once with his right to partition.

II. The real reason alleged by the defendants for the reversal of this judgment is that the plaintiff’s family and the defendants who purchased from them, believed that the plaintiff was dead at tbe time that the defendant acquired her interest in the lands in controversy.

The evidence tended to show that the plaintiff left Buchanan county twenty-one years before December, 1905, and had not been heard from until 1900 or 1901. That in 1896 his mother, Mahala Grimes, died, the owner of the fee in this land, and in the same year a granddaughter of Mahala Grimes instituted a partition suit in the circuit court of Buchanan county against Cicero Smith and Homer Smith, alleging in her petition that she and the said Cicero and Homer Smith were the sole and only children and grandchildren of Mahala Grimes, deceased, and the said defendants Homer and Cicero Smith in their answers in said partition suit admitted the said allegations to be true and thereupon the court found that the said Effie Thomas and the said Cicero and Homer Smith were the sole heirs at law of the said Mahala Grimes, deceased, and judgment in partition was rendered and said land divided among the said Effie Thomas and the said Cicero and Homer Smith, and [641]*641thereafter the said Cicero and Homer Smith and Effie Thomas conveyed their several interests in said lands to the defendant Henry Miller, and the said Henry Miller then conveyed the same to Elgie Miller. Defendants invoke the presumption of death arising from the absence of the plaintiff from Buchanan county, and insist that the plaintiff having created this legal presumption by his absence is now precluded from claiming against an innocent person who purchased said land in good faith after a decree in partition between the remaining heirs at law. As to the partition suit between Effie Thomas and Cicero and Homer Smith, the plaintiff herein was no party thereto and of course is not bound by the decree in that case. This is too plain for discussion. It is not pretended that there is any evidence of any inducement by the plaintiff to the defendants in this case to purchase the land, or that he did any act which would estop him from claiming his interest in this land, unless it is his absence from the State for more than seven years.

In Scott v. McNeal, 154 U. S. l. c. 49, the Supreme Court of the United States said: “The fact that a person has been absent and not heard from for seven years may create such a presumption of his death as, if not overcome by other proof, is such prima-facie evidence of his death, that the probate court may assume him to be dead and appoint an administrator of his estate, and that such an administrator may sue upon a debt due to him. But proof, under proper pleadings, even in a collateral suit, that he was living at the time of the appointment of the administrator, controls and overthrows the prima-facie evidence of his death and establishes that the court had no jurisdiction, and the administrator no authority; and he is not bound, either by the order appointing the administrator, or by the judgment in any suit brought [642]*642by tbe administrator against a third person, because he was not a party to and had no notice of either. ’ ’

It was not shown that the plaintiff knew that his mother was dead or that she left an estate or that he had any knowledge whatever of the former partition proceedings between the other heirs. When plaintiff, left this State he had no property here that was liable to be affected by his absence and his mother did not die until twelve years after his removal from the State and there is absolutely no evidence, as already said, that he had notice of his mother’s death, or that she left an estate to which he was an heir. In the case of Scott v. McNeal, above referred to, the Supreme Court of the United States referred to the case of Lavin v. The Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, 18 Blatchford, 1, in which it was held that letters of administration upon the estate of a living man, issued by the surrogate after judicially determining that he was dead, were null and void as against him; that payment of a debt to an administrator so appointed was no defense to an action by him against the debtor, and that to hold such administration valid against him would deprive him of his property without due process of law within the meaning of the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

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Bluebook (online)
121 S.W. 21, 221 Mo. 636, 1909 Mo. LEXIS 165, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/grimes-v-miller-mo-1909.