Krieger v. Crocker

• Decision Date: 07 December 1893
• Citation: 24 S.W. 170,118 Mo. 531
• Parties: KRIEGER v. CROCKER.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

24 S.W. 170

118 Mo. 531

KRIEGER v. CROCKER.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 2.

December 7, 1893.

DEED — ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF MARRIED WOMAN.

A deed of a married woman, the acknowledgment of which does not show that she was examined separate and apart from her husband, as provided by Gen. St. 1865, c. 109, §§ 13, 14, in force at the time the deed was executed, is void.

Appeal from circuit court, Iron county; John L. Thomas, Judge.

Ejectment by Charles Krieger against T. E. Crocker. From an order refusing to set aside a nonsuit, plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.

C. D. Yancey, for appellant. Silver & Brown and W. R. Edgar, for respondent.

BURGESS, J.

Ejectment for a tract of land in Iron county. The petition is in the usual form, and the answer a general denial. Plaintiff claimed title through mesne conveyance from Maria Everly and Henry Everly, her husband, and on the trial before a jury offered to read in evidence a deed to the land in controversy executed by them on the 26th day of January, 1870. To the reading of this deed in evidence, defendant objected upon the ground that it had not been properly acknowledged, inasmuch as the certificate of acknowledgment did not show that the deed was acknowledged by Maria Everly separate and apart from her husband. The objection was sustained, and the deed was not allowed to be read, whereupon plaintiff duly excepted, took a nonsuit, with leave, and after having moved to set the same aside, and the motion being overruled, he appealed to this court. The certificate of acknowledgment to the deed is as follows: "State of Missouri, county of St. Louis — ss.: Be it remembered that on the twenty-sixth day of January, A. D. eighteen hundred and seventy, before me, the undersigned, a notary public within and for the county and state aforesaid, came Maria Everly and Henry Everly, her husband, who are personally known to me to be the same persons whose names are subscribed to the foregoing instrument of writing, as parties thereto, and they acknowledged the same to be their act and deed for the purposes therein mentioned. And she, the said Maria Everly, having been by me first made acquainted with the contents of said instrument of writing, acknowledged that she executed the same freely, and without compulsion or undue influence of her said husband."

The title of the land at the time of the execution of this deed was in Maria Everly, and, while it is conceded by counsel for plaintiff that the acknowledgment was...