23 S.E. 301 | Va. | 1895
delivered the opinion of the court.
This was a suit brought in the circuit court of Augusta county by certain of the children and heirs at law of Alexander B. Lightner for the settlement of his estate, real and personal, for the payment of his debts, and the division of what remained among his heirs and distributees. John A. Lightner and the widow and children of Charles A. Lightner, who, with others, were parties defendant to this bill, filed their answers, which are taken as cross bills, in which they set out that Charles A. Lightner, in his lifetime, had been, by his father, A. B. Lightner, put in possession of a tract of land of 280 acres, near West View, in Beverly Manor district, Augusta county, and that the said tract had been for years in the exclusive possession and use of their father, Charles A. Lightner ; that Alexander B. Lightner was a man of large property; that Charles A. Lightner had remained with him and worked for him without compensation for a number of -years after he attained his majority; that he had received no compensation therefor, always under the promise from the father that those years of labor by him would be liberally compensated ; that in 1879 Charles A. Lightner, the father of the defendants, was renting the farm in question from Robert Gr. Bickle, then its
The law is well settled, by a series of decisions in this court, •‘ ‘that a eourt of equity will compel the conveyance of the legal title of land claimed under parol gift, supported by a meritorious consideration, by reason of which the donee has been induced to alter his condition and make expenditures of money in valuable improvements on the land.” Burkholder v. Ludlam, 30 Grat. 256. And the demand for specific performance may be set in an answer to a bill asking partition, but it is still an application for equitable aid, and is to be governed by settled
The case of John A. Lightner presents less difficulty. His case, as stated in his answer, is : That he entered upon the farm which he now claims as a renter from his father, and continued as such until about 1886, when, it having come to the knowledge of his father that he contemplated the purchase of the Zirkle farm, his father said to him : “No ; do not do that. Stay where you are and improve the land. I give you that farm, only requiring you to pay §3,500.” That, in reliance upon this promise, he did remain upon the farm, cultivating and using it as his own, and making upon it costly and valuable permanent improvements. That he did live upon the farm, and that he did improve it, are fully proven ; but, on the other hand, it is shown, as we have seen, that he entered upon the