67 Iowa 413 | Iowa | 1885
The plaintiff charges that the defendant • J. M. Williams procured the title to the land by fraud. It appears that the plaintiff is illiterate and unlearned, and that J. M. Williams, who is his uncle, was the one to whom he looked for advice and assistance in his youth and inexperience, and that Williams took advantage of the confidential relations existing between them, -and procured the title to the farm by falsely-representing to the plaintiff that the brothers and sisters of the plaintiff’s father were about to institute suits claiming an interest in the farm which he inherited from his father, and that they would harass plaintiff and divest him of all his property by such law-suits, and advised him that; to avoid financial ruin, he should allow the land to be conveyed to him, (said J. M. Williams,) and that when said trouble was ended he would convey the land to the plaintiff. The defendant J. M. Williams denied that he made any such representations, and insisted that he purchased the land from the plaintiff in good faith, and that lie’ has paid him the greater part of the purchase money therefor. This is the principal question in the case.
The court found that the claim made by the plaintiff as to .the destruction of the deed and conveyance of the land, and the representations by which the conveyance was procured; was sustained by the proof. We think this finding was correct, taking all of the facts and circumstances disclosed in the evidence, and we are well satisfied with the conclusion reached by the circuit court. But the defendants contend strenuously that the transaction is within the familiar rule that, when one conveys his property to another with the purpose of hindering or defrauding his creditors, he will not be allowed to recover the property from his grantee, because the law
Modified and Affirmed.