Ridenour v. Duncan

291 S.W.2d 900, 1956 Mo. LEXIS 742
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedJune 11, 1956
Docket44903
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 291 S.W.2d 900 (Ridenour v. Duncan) 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
Ridenour v. Duncan, 291 S.W.2d 900, 1956 Mo. LEXIS 742 (Mo. 1956).

Opinion

BOHLING, Commissioner.

Hazel Duncan Ridenour, Joyce Snyder , , _ , g; , L , and Raymond Duncan sued Robert Earl Duncan and Florence Duncan, husband and wife, and Eliza W. Herod and Elmer J. Fults to cancel certain deeds conveying the property commonly known as 907 Prospect avenue, Kansas City, Missouri-, a five-apartment building, and all the furniture and furnishings therein, and a deed of trust thereon, and asked, claiming an undivided one-half interest therein, title be decreed and for general .equitable relief. A prior appeal, affirming an order granting plain *902 tiffs a new trial, is reported at 246 S.W.2d 765.

Plaintiffs contend Mrs. Goodwin, their paternal grandmother, died seized and possessed of the property involved^ and they have an undivided one-half interest therein. Defendants Duncan claim the title stood in the names of Robert Earl Duncan and Florence Duncan as a gift at the time of Mrs. Goodwin’s death. Mrs. Herod, claiming she was a bona fide purchaser from the Duncans, asked that title be decreed, prayed general equitable relief, and joined with her answer a cross-claim against her codefend-ants asking $6,000 damages. These issues were- tried. The chancellor found for the plaintiffs and defendants have appealed.

Minnie Duncan Goodwin was twice married. Her only children were Sidney Earnest Duncan and Robert Earl Duncan, known in the record as “S. E.” or “Earnest,” and “Earl,” respectively; and her sons were named as beneficiaries in equal shares in a will offered in evidence.

Upon suggestions of deaths following the submission of the case, Nathaniel Wade Duncan, administrator de bonis non of the estate of Robert Earl Duncan, deceased, was substituted as a party defendant for said deceased, and Nathaniel Wade Duncan, administrator of the estate of Florence Duncan, deceased, was substituted as a party defendant for said deceased.

S. E. Duncan died July 3, 1947, predeceasing his mother. Plaintiffs are his only children and heirs.

Mrs. Goodwin died about 3:00 a.m. March 18, 1949.

The chancellor, under the evidence hereinafter narrated, found that Minnie Duncan Gpodwin was the owner at her death of the property involved1; that Elmer J. Fults, who held the record title, was a straw person, having no interest in the property; that Mrs.- Goodwin did not in her lifetime' make a gift of the property to defendants Robert Earl Duncan and Florence Duncan; that at Mrs. Goodwin’s death the property descended and vested in plaintiffs, a one-half interest, and in defendant Robert -Earl Duncan, a one-half interest; that, following Mrs. Goodwin’s death, the defendants Duncan undertook to convey the property to defendant Eliza W. Herod (the considera- . tion being $4,400) ; that defendant Herod was not a bona fide purchaser of the property; that Robert Earl Duncan expended $810 clearing the title to the property and plaintiffs stand indebted to said defendant in the amount of $405; that defendant Herod should have paid defendants Duncan $2,200 for an undivided one-half interest in the property but had actually made overpay-ments to said grantors, and that there is due said Herod from said Duncans $1,400. The decree conformed to said findings, and dismissed the claims against defendant Fults.

The record on the first appeal established that about June 6, 1947, the record title was put in the name of Fults, a straw person, who thereupon 'executed and delivered a warranty deed with the grantee’s name in blank to Era Bond for Mrs. Goodwin; that after the death of Mrs. Goodwin the names of Robert Earl Duncan and Florence Duncan were inserted in said deed as grantees and the deed- was thereafter delivered to Mr. Duncan. 246 S.W.2d loc. cit. 767-769.

Era Bond, a real estate agent, handled all the transfers involved. He was called to the stand by plaintiffs in the instant trial. He was defendant’s witness at the first trial. There is some conflict in his testimony at the two trials. The determinative events occurred in March and April, 1949 — Mrs. Goodwin’s death; Fults-Duncans transaction ; Duncans’ power of attorney to Bond; Duncans-Herod transaction; the attorney’s opinion on the title for defendant Herod. Plaintiffs’ petition was filed April 12, 1949. The -first trial was in December, 1949. The instant trial was in November, 1952. Asked his age at the instant trial, Bond answered: “Eighty some, I don’t know.” He testified he did not remember certain matters he testified to at the first trial, that three years had passed; that he remembered at the first trial “as that was pretty close to the time that it was done”; that his “memory then was better than-it is now”.; “Q. And what you said then was true? A. Well, I hope so. *903 I think so. Q.' Well was it? A. I think so, yes.”

As stated on the first appeal and not developed in detail here, 246 S.W.2d 767, 2d col., Mrs. Goodwin and S. E. Duncan, through Bond, purchased the property for $5,750 on October 26, 1946, taking title in S. E. Duncan. We understand $3,000 was paid down, Bond loaning Mrs. Goodwin $20.0 and S. E. paying $450. On the same day S. E. Duncan gave back a note for $2,750, payable $30 monthly, secured by a deed of trust on the property, and executed, acknowledged, and delivered to Mrs. Goodwin a warranty deed to the property with the name of the grantee in blank. Mrs. Goodwin, with her husband, lived in one of the apartments. She collected the rents, managed the property and made the payments credited on the note during her lifetime.

The title, according to the record, was kept out of the name of Mrs. Goodwin to deprive her husband, Henry W. Goodwin, of any marital rights in the property should she predecease him.

S. E. Duncan was not well. Mrs. Goodwin received a telegram June 6, 1947, from the Chief Medical Officer, Wadsworth, Kansas, stating that Sidney was seriously ill. Bond, after questioning, testified he remembered Mrs. Goodwin brought the telegram in on June 6, 1947, said Sidney could not hold out long and “ T have got to change that property,’ ” and that immediately Elmer J. Fults was named as grantee in S. E. Duncan’s deed. S. E. Duncan’s deed to Fults was recorded June 6, 1947. Fults executed and delivered his warranty deed “right back,” conveying the property with the grantee in blank, and the deed was put in Bond’s safe. Fults was paid $5.

There is testimony from Bond that he testified at the first trial he last saw Mrs.Goodwin when she made a payment on the-note (the last credit before her death is-dated “3-1-49”), and she said: “T think you just as well put Earl Duncan’s name on: that deed.’ I said ‘All right.’ She said, ‘If anything happens could you get another deed?. If I should sell that place, could you get another deed-from Fults?’ . I said, ‘I think so. I have already paid him,’ and at ■that date I think I put Earl Duncan’s name on the deed”; but .that this testimony was .not all true, because he did not fill in the grantees’ names.

At the instant trial Bond testified that he stated at the first trial he held Fults’ deed in his safe from June 6, 1947, until March 17, 1949; that he had studied about the matter and Mrs.

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Bluebook (online)
291 S.W.2d 900, 1956 Mo. LEXIS 742, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ridenour-v-duncan-mo-1956.