110 Ky. 147 | Ky. Ct. App. | 1901
Opinion op the court by
Affirming.
It appears from the record that previous to December 20, 1894, the appellee, Morgan 'Clark, an,d his wife, Rebecca A. Clark, either owned, or had an interest in, a certain tract of land, which they exchanged with John W. Porter fora tract of land known in this record as the “Long Branch Land.” Porter made a deed to them, by the terms of which Eebecca A. Clark was vested with a life estate in it, with a certain character of remainder to her children, with the right in Morgan Clark .to control it during his life time. . This deed was not recorded. On December 20, 1894, the appellant, Rittenhouse, and John W. Porter and others met th’e Clarks, and they sold the land to Rittenhouse for twenty-two hundred and some odd dollars. For reasons which will hereafter appear, Clark and wife did not make a deed to Eittenhouse, but the deed which Porter had made them was destroyed with. the knowledge of Eittenhouse, Porter and the Clarks, and at the instance-
We will first dispose of a preliminary question that .arises in the case, which is, did the court err in rendering the judgment which it did, because the infant children of
The doctrine of estoppel, which the appellant invokes-to aid him in defeating a recovery in this action, seems-, to us to have no place- in it. It is true that the rule is well recognized in Story’s Equity Jurisprudence, in many cases by this court and by the Supreme Court Of the-United States, and we believe toy all courts, that when a person having title to an estate which is offered for sale, and, knowing his title, stands by and encourages the sale, and does not forbid- it, and thereby another person is induced to purchase the same- under the supposition that the-title is good, the party thus standing by and being silent is bound by the sale. When one Is silent when he ought-to have in good faith spoken, he shall not be heard to speak when he ought to be silent. If Porter had claimed to be-the owner of the property in question, and was proposing-to sell it to Rittenhouse, and Clark and wife encouraged' him to buy and1 pay for it, then they might have been estopped thereafter to assert claim to it. Rittenhouse was not negotiating with Porter for the purchase of the property, but was buying it from the Clarks, and Porter-■was simply aiding the contracting -parties, to the end that the Clarks be- devested and Rittenhouse invested with the title to- it. The evidence shows that Rittenhouse knew all' about the deed which Porter had made to the Clarks- and Its terms, and
A married woman may do an act which estops her from thereafter claiming her own property, but this1 is not one of the cases wherein she has deprived her. self of that right. Mrs. Clark did not 'represent at the time of the sale to Rittenhouse that she had no title or interest in the property, nor did she represent that her children had none. On the other hand, the facts proven show that all the parties to the transaction recognized that she did have a life estate in it, and remainder in her infant children. The question here is, did she devest herself of title to the property by consenting that the deed which Porter had made 'her should be destroyed? She once having .acquired title to the property, the destruction of the deed could not deprive her of it. When the owner of real estate executes and delivers a deed of conveyance to another, which is accepted, the title vests in the grantee. At least, in the case of a married woman, it will take a reconveyance to reinvest the grantor with title — a destruction of the deed will not do so. 1 Devi. Deeds, section 300, reads as follows: “When a deed has been properly exe> cuted and delivered, it operates as a transfer of title. Its redelivery to the grantor or its cancellation can not operate as ia retransfer of the title so conveyed1. Where it has once become effective, it can not be defeated by any act occurring- afterwards, unless it be by force of some condition contained in the deed1 itself. The redelivery of a deed is not only ineffectual to retransfer the title, but also to revive a debt for the extinguishment of which the deed was given. “The decided weight of authority is that the .surrender of a deed, though not registered, will not oper
We apply the rule announced by the authorities cited to the farts of this case, in so far as to hold that a married woman could not devest herself and her children of the title to real estate by simply destroying their deed, and consenting that their grantee shall make a deed to another. There is no proof in this record tending to show that the Clarks attempted to resell the property to Porter, or that they had any contract with him, by which he was to buy it. As we have said the facts of this case do not show that Mrs. Clark was estopped to assert her right to the Long Branch land by being present and consenting that Porter might make Rittenhouse a deed therefor. Not being guilty of a.ny act working estoppel on her rights, the only way that Rittenhouse could claim the land