126 Iowa 627 | Iowa | 1905
The facts conceded by the appellant are that defendant Catharine Hall, who was drawing a pension from the federal government as a soldier’s widow, in 1897 entered into a contract for the purchase of one hundred and sixty acres of land from one Brown for the agreed price of $2,400, and paid $216 of that amount out of her pension ( money. Afterwards she sold the coal rights under eighty acres of the land for cash, and used $1,050 of the proceeds in making a further payment, and then received a deed for the premises,- subject' to a purchase-money mortgage for $1,380. Of the one hundred and sixty-acre tract, forty acres became her homestead, on which she resided with her children; and in January, 1902, she conveyed the remaining one hundred and twenty acres to defendant O. R. Hall, one
II. But a consideration of the evidence relied upon as tending to show fraud on the part of O. B. Hall in accepting a conveyance of tire one hundred and twenty-acre tract from his mother leads to the same result. As already stated, it is established beyond reasonable controversy that 0. II. Hall paid his mother $720 in cash, and surrendered a note which he held against her for $300, assuming the purchase-money mortgage. And it is equally well established that this was the reasonable value of the land at the time he purchased it. Counsel for appellant marshal the circumstances disclosed by the testimony of the witnesses, as tending to show that the cash payment was by money not actually belonging to O. B. Hall, but in reality .the proceeds of property belonging to Catharine Hall and her other sons, who were indebted with
The burden of proving a fraudulent purpose on the part of O. R. Hall in accepting this conveyance, to assist his mother in defrauding plaintiff and other creditors, was, of course, on the plaintiff. Counsel urge that the evidence, taken together, shows a fraudulent scheme from the beginning, by which the brothers of O. R. Hall induced their mother to sign notes, which were negotiated for cash, and the proceeds used in various ways until she became practically bankrupt, with the purpose that this son, who did not become liable for such indebtedness, should ultimately acquire the property in his own name, and thus work a fraud upon creditors. .But mere suspicion of fraud is not enough to require the setting aside of a conveyance made for an adequate consideration, and.the evidence on which plaintiff relies can hardly be said to raise more than a mere suspicion. The transactions referred to by counsel are reasonably explained . by the testimony as consistent with the entire good faith of O. R. Hall, and we reach the conclusion that no fraudulent purpose on his part was established.
The decree of the lower court is therefore affirmed.