142 Iowa 701 | Iowa | 1909
The plaintiff and William Bell were married on July 2, 1902, in Clarke County, after a courtship of not exceeding’ two months. William Bell was then eighty years of age, and. for two years a widower, and plaintiff was a widow forty-seven years of age, with two minor children. „ At the date of the commencement of this courtship William Bell was the owner of about three hundred acres of land in Clarke County of the value of about $15,000, which value had, at the time of the trial of the case in 1908, increased to about $25,000. On June 23, 1902, nine days before the marriage, William Bell conveyed this land in three parcels, by warranty deeds, to his three adult children by his former marriage, defendants in these actions, without other consideration than that of love and affection. Two of the deeds were at once recorded in Clarke County, but the third, to a grantee residing in Nebraska, was first forwarded to such grantee, and' then returned for record, and recorded on the day of the wedding. Concurrently with the execution and delivery of these three deeds three instruments of lease were executed by the grantees in the deeds to the grantor for the same premises described in the deeds, granting to said William Bell the premises described for a period of twenty
There is little evidence directly tending to show intentional fraud on the part of William Bell in making these voluntary conveyances, or on the part of the grantees in accepting them, so far as the prospective rights of plaintiff were concerned. . On the other hand, there is evidence, practically uncontroverted' of an understanding existing between William Bell and his former wife prior to her death and these three children, that some such distribution of his property should be made. But, if without plaintiff’s knowledge such conveyances were made pending a treaty of marriage, between plaintiff and William Bell, they were no doubt constructively fraudulent as to her, and should be set aside, so far as they deprived her of the contingent dower interest in the property which she would have otherwise acquired by the marriage. Wallace v. Wallace, 137 Iowa, 169; Beechley v. Beechley, 134 Iowa, 75. Nevertheless the burden is on the plaintiff to establish such fraud — that is, the want of knowledge on her part, and her reliance on the prospective rights in the property to be acquired by the marriage relied upon as an inducement thereto — and,. as we view the evidence, the determination of this issue depends upon the proof of want of knowledge by plaintiff of the conveyances; it appearing without controversy that plaintiff knew that the property belonged to
However, in September, 1906, plaintiff instituted an action against her husband for a divorce, alleging that among other inducements and arguments to persuade and inflimnce her to consent to marry him, he had represented to her the advantage to come to her in accepting him as a husband in his large property wealth and his large real estate holdings, all of which he stated would render her comfortable and independent for life, and provide her with a home and comfortable surroundings, stating that he represented to her that he owned over three hundred acres of valuable farm land, which she would enjoy.with him as his wife, and in which she would have a life interest, and that this was the inducement which caused her to marry him, and, further, that since her marriage she had dis
We have set out the substance of all the testimony bearing upon the question whether plaintiff had information prior to the marriage that William Bell had in some manner disposed of his land to his children, and relied upon his continuing to be the full owner of the land as an inducement, to the marriage, and we reach the conclusion that plaintiff has not, by a preponderance of the evidence, made out a case of even constructive fraud. If the reasonableness of the arrangement made by William Bell with his children can be taken into account as bearing upon the truthfulness of the testimony of plaintiff that she would not have married him had she known of this arrangement, it is to be borne in mind that, without property of her own, and with two minor children to support by manual labor, and also without any probability of other marriage, for she was already forty-seven years of age, she
On the merits of the whole case, we can not see how the trial judge could well have reached any other conclusion than that announced in the decree, and the decree is therefore affirmed.