72 Mo. 669 | Mo. | 1880
The principles applicable to this case have been so frequently asserted in this court, that it seems like a work of supererogation to restate or reapply them.
Though the daughter, Margaret, had attained the age of twenty-one in the February prior to the execution of the deed, and, therefore, according to the ruling of this court in Caho v. Endress, 68 Mo. 224, had, some three years before, become of age, yet it is quite evident that she wTas totally unversed in the ways and wisdom of the world, and notwithstanding her majority, still remained in the leading stinngs and under the influence of parental authority.. In these circumstances, and but a short period before she executed the deed in question, less than a month she thinks, her father reproached her with the design of turning him out of house and home; said he had heard it, but when asked by the daughter who told him, and how he thought she could possibly do such a thing, even if she desired, he refused to tell her who told him, and said he never would tell her. There is every reason to believe this story was woven in the loom of the father’s own invention, since he does not attempt to deny that he made such statement, and it is by no means improbable that he charged the daughter with cherishing the unfilial design of turning him out of house and home, just after he was pressed by Robert Miller, his surety on his curator’s bond, to relieve him of that surety-ship, when it was suggested by the surety that as the wards were twenty-one “the property might change hands.” The conversation of defendant with Robert Miller, took place between the 1st and 10th day of May, 1874, and in that conversation defendant expressed himself as bitterly opposed to the intermarriage of his daughter with Silas W. Miller, the plaintiff. It is in evidence that defendant, though he denies it, wrote to his son on the 14th day of
The son, on his arrival, was immediately informed'of Robert Miller’s request to have the curatorship settled, and when he reached home he proposed to his sister that they should give “ their father a home;” that they had “better give him a deed during his lifetime.” To this proposal she readily assented, and on Monday following, without further conversation bn the subject, the deed in question was drawn up at King’s office, in St. Charles, in the temporary absence of defendant, and without his knowledge or solicitation, as he alleges. The daughter states, however, that while she was on the porch of King’s office, and a few moments before the deed was executed, her father told her he had plenty, and that she need not sign the deed unless she wished. The receipt acknowledging payment and satisfaction of all moneys and property received by the defendant as curator of the estate of his wards, was executed
I. have found it difficult to resist the impression, from a perusal of the evidence, that there was a concert of action or at least an understanding between the father and the son that the deed should be procured ; and difficult also to resist the belief that the son came up from St. Louis on the 16th day of May in response to the letter which a disinter
But it is entirely immaterial in this case, so far as concerns the conclusion which should be reached, whether there was concert of action between the father and son or not; it is sufficient that the son was the moving cause of his sister executing the deed ; that she did the act which deprived her, during the lifetime of her father, of all the property she had in the world, irnprovidently, without time or opportunity for proper reflection, and in the absence of independent advice, and while she was not yet emancipated from parental and fraternal influence. And it is well settled that the undue influence need not proceed from the recipient of the ward’s or donor’s bounty, but it is equally fatal to the validity of the gift that such influence was exerted by a third person. Ranken v. Patton, 65 Mo. 378; Ford v. Hennessey, 70 Mo. 580. There are many points of coincidence oetween the present case, and that of Banken v. Patton, supra, as was very pertinently observed by the St. Louis court,of appeals, when this cause was before that court, (5 Mo. App. Rep. 33;) and the same ruling which held the gift for naught in that Ínstame, would hold it for naught in this one. Such gifts are watched by courts of equity with the most jealous scrutiny, and generally held as presumptively void; (Garvin v. Williams, 44 Mo. 465,) and the burden is cast upon the donee to show in the clearest and most satisfactory manner that the gift m question is one which is in every particular worthy of receiving the sanction of a court of equity. ¡Street v. Goss, 62 Mo.
