2 Watts 323 | Pa. | 1834
The opinion of-the Court was delivered by
In England a trust results by implication of law but in two cases: the first where the purchaser has paid the price with his own money, but taken the conveyance in the name of another—not where he has paid with the money of another, and taken the conveyance in his own name: and the second, where a trust has been declared of but part of the estate, from which the law implies an intent to reserve the beneficial ownership of the residue. These are specific cases of resulting trusts; and according to Lloyd v. Spillet, 2 Atk. 150, they are the only ones. Cases have undoubtedly been confounded with them, though readily distinguishable from them, in which a specific lien has been given for purchase money withdrawn from a fund towards which the purchaser stood in the relation of a trustee. A purchase by a husband bound to purchase -and settle, has been presumed to have been made in contemplation of a settlement; and in clear cases trust money paid away in a purchase, has been followed into the land, even on parol proof. But though the purchaser is spoken of in those cases as a trustee, just as a mortgagee is spoken of as a trustee, the equity of the party beneficially entitled is to have his money and not the land; and such was the prayer in Lench v. Lench, 10 Ves. 512. But with us all distinction on this head is overlooked or disregarded; and it seems to be settled by Gregory v. Setter, 1 Dall. 139; German v. Gabbald, 3 Binn. 302; and Duffield v. Wallace, 2 Serg. & Rawle 521, that a purchase with trust money, in whole or in part, gives the owner of the money a correspondent ownership of the land. How that-was supposed to follow—whether from the inability of the courts to order a sale, or from the license left to parol declarations of trust by our statute of frauds—it matters not to inquire ; for though the bounds of these resulting interests have been sensibly enlarged, the trust is still considered to arise from the ownership of the purchase money. That it has been raised on no other foundation, shows this ownership to be the efficient cause, and not the direct creative power of an express declaration, which may, however, have a legitimate influence on the event, but only as a confession of the ownership. By any other hypothesis, what we call a resulting trust would cease to be an implied one. That an express trust may be declared by parol, I am not disposed to deny; but if declared by the grantee and not the grantor of the legal estate, where its object is not to indicate a beneficiary purpose by the grantor in favour of the cestui que trust, it must, to be binding, be made in consideration of payment of the purchase money by the cestui que trust; and then it would produce no other effect than the law would produce without it. Probably
Judgment affirmed.