Kellner v. Stahl

8 Pa. D. & C. 227, 1926 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 251
CourtPennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Philadelphia County
DecidedMay 20, 1926
DocketNo. 3533
StatusPublished

This text of 8 Pa. D. & C. 227 (Kellner v. Stahl) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Philadelphia County primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Kellner v. Stahl, 8 Pa. D. & C. 227, 1926 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 251 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1926).

Opinion

Lewis, J.,

The facts in this case have been fairly well ironed out by much litigation between the same parties. Aside from proceedings in the Orphans’ Court, there have been in this court an action of ejectment (Kellner, Executor, v. Stahl, 3 D. & C. 389), resulting in a directed verdict for plaintiff for one-third of the real estate involved and for the defendant as to an undivided two-thirds interest; and a bill for partition brought by the same plaintiff (Kellner, Executor, v. Stahl, 7 D. & C. 95), resulting in a decree directing partition and ordering a reference to a master for that purpose. This present proceeding, reference to which is made in the last-cited ease in number 20 of the findings of fact, was instituted by a bill in equity praying that defendant be declared, as to a certain interest in the same real estate, a trustee for the plaintiff as executor, and be directed to account for the rents, issues and profits of said interest and to convey said interest to plaintiff. Although substantially all of the facts out of which it is alleged [228]*228the resulting' trust arose have been found and set forth in the earlier opinion of this court in 7 D. & C. 95, we have, for purposes of convenience and that the equity rules might be strictly complied with, upon the bill, answer and testimony, made the following

Findings of fact.

1. Mary Maier, the owner of premises 1208 Palmer Street and 446-458 Flora Street, died July 9, 1913.

2. Mary Maier had made and published a last will and testament in writing, dated Jan. 30, 1908, but said will was not found until the year 1920.

3. As a result of proceedings in the Orphans’ Court, three nephews of Mary Maier, namely, K. F. Stahl, J. W. Stahl and the defendant, Gustav Albert Stahl, brothers, were declared to be her heirs-at-law and put in possession of her real estate shortly after her death and before the will was found.

4. In 1915, while still in ignorance of the existence of Mary Maier’s will, the defendant, Gustav Albert Stahl, in good faith purchased the undivided two-thirds interest of his two brothers in the real estate for a consideration of $9000.

5. Simultaneously with the execution and delivery of the deed by defendant’s brothers of their two-thirds interest to him, defendant executed a mortgage of the same premises, inter alia, to the Philadelphia Company for Guaranteeing Mortgages in the principal sum of $9000, as security for defendant’s personal bond of $18,000, which in turn was given to secure a loan to him of $9000. All of the money realized by defendant upon the said mortgage, certain deductions having been made from the full sum, was paid by him to his two brothers on account of the purchase of their two-thirds interest.

6. Defendant had previously, out of his own money, paid a few hundred dollars to his brothers toward the said purchase price.

7. On Aug. 30, 1915, a little more than a month after the execution of the first mortgage, the defendant mortgaged the said premises, inter alia, to the Constatter Building Association to secure payment of the sum of $5000.

8. The will of Mary Maier was found in 1920 and duly probated on April 14th of that year. In it the testatrix, after bequeathing a number of legacies, directed her executors to sell the real estate involved here.

9. Title to one-third of the premises in question is and has been, since Mary Maier’s death, in the plaintiff: as executor.

Conclusions of law.

1. The money with which defendant purchased his brothers’ interest in the real estate was his own money, in which plaintiff had no interest as cestui que trust or otherwise.

2. The legal title was put in the one who paid the consideration, hence no trust resulted from payment of the purchase money.

3. A resulting trust in favor of plaintiff did not arise as to any portion of the two-thirds interest in the premises purchased by the defendant.

4. The bill should be dismissed.

Discussion.

As sustaining the contention that there exists a resulting trust in favor of plaintiff, two rules of law are advanced. First, that where a purchaser of real estate pays the purchase money but title is taken in the name of another (subject to the qualification not mentioned by plaintiff that there be no such relationship between them as husband and wife or parent and child), there is a resulting trust in favor of the purchaser. The application of this principle is sought by reasoning that, since title to. one-third of the real estate was [229]*229in plaintiff, it follows that one-third of the mortgage money realized from the whole property belonged to plaintiff, and that when defendant made use of this mortgage money to purchase the two-thirds interest of his brothers, a trust in favor of plaintiff resulted as to one-third of the two-thirds interest because such portion was bought with plaintiff’s money. The second rule of law relied on is that a trust results in favor of the beneficiary when a trustee or other fiduciary buys property with trust funds but takes title in his own name, the position being that when defendant mortgaged the entire property for $9000 he received and held one-third of that sum as trustee for plaintiff.

Defendant replies that these legal principles have no application, for the reason that the money used by defendant to purchase the interest of his brothers was his own money, even if borrowed, the fact that he had mortgaged the entire property, including plaintiff’s one-third, as collateral security for the loan being held immaterial. Defendant gave his own bond for the full amount, on which bond he alone became, and still is, liable.

It is conceded, we think, that the nub of this controversy is to be found in the answer to the question as to the ownership of the money raised by the mortgage of the premises. Did it belong partly to the plaintiff and partly to the defendant because of the fact that, unknown to all concerned at that time, title to one-third of the property was in the plaintiff as executor? Or, on the other hand, was the money the defendant’s alone, despite the fact that, in obtaining it, he had mortgaged as security plaintiff’s one-third interest as well as the two-thirds interest he had purchased from his brothers? The legal consequences flowing from the answers to these questions are fixed; the main problem is to find the correct answers to them.

Much stress was laid upon the contention that the answer filed by defendant to the bill insufficiently denied the averment that the loan of $9000 to defendant was made solely on the security of the premises. We think the denial was sufficient, but the fact seems rather immaterial. It is not denied, and indeed is a fact, that defendant gave his personal bond, conditioned for the payment of $9000. There is no provision limiting the collection of the debt to the mortgaged premises. It would be necessary, it seems to us, to overlook entirely the nature of the mortgage transaction to say that the loan was made entirely and solely on the security of the property. “The presumption is that the security of both the bond and mortgage was relied on:” Juniata B. & L. Ass’n v. Hetzel, 103 Pa. 507.

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Bluebook (online)
8 Pa. D. & C. 227, 1926 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 251, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/kellner-v-stahl-pactcomplphilad-1926.