Buckley v. Buckley
| Decision Date | 03 December 1938 |
| Citation | 17 N.E.2d 887,301 Mass. 530 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
| Parties | RICHARD J. BUCKLEY v. CATHERINE F. BUCKLEY & another. |
October 4, 1938.
Present: FIELD, C.
J., DONAHUE LUMMUS, QUA, & DOLAN, JJ.
Bank and Banking Joint account. Husband and Wife. Joint Tenants.
Findings, warranted by the evidence in a suit in equity, that money of a husband was deposited in a joint savings bank account in the names of himself and of his wife but with an understanding between them that she might withdraw for household expenses and that "in case anything happened" to him, the account should be hers, warranted a conclusion that withdrawal of the whole by the wife was a breach of trust and a decree ordering her to return the money to the account and to deliver the savings bank book to the husband.
Upon uncontradicted evidence in a suit in equity as to a savings bank account which was started by a deposit by a woman of her own money before marriage, was increased by accumulations thereon and by deposits of moneys belonging to her husband, and later was transferred to the joint names of the wife and her husband it was held that a finding, and a decree based thereon, that the beneficial interest in the whole account was the husband's was plainly wrong in so far as the wife's original deposit and its accumulations were concerned.
BILL IN EQUITY filed in the Superior Court on August 13, 1937. The case was heard by Walsh, J., and in this court was submitted on briefs.
E. D. Hassan, for the defendant Buckley.
E. P. Benjamin & G.
M. Yaghjian, for the plaintiff.
This is a suit in equity in which the plaintiff, husband of the defendant Buckley (hereinafter referred to as the defendant) seeks to recover certain sums of money withdrawn by the latter in 1937 from deposits standing in the names of both in joint accounts in the Institution for Savings in Roxbury and its Vicinity and the Boston Five Cents Savings Bank. The evidence is reported, and the judge filed a report of the material facts found by him in which he concluded that the money constituting the deposits involved "was money of the plaintiff"; that "there was no gift to the defendant of said money or any part thereof at any time; that the understanding between the parties was that the deposits were to be subject to withdrawal by the defendant for ordinary household requirements and in case anything happened to [the] plaintiff the defendant could have available the entire amounts for her own, but that it was money belonging to the husband"; and that "the action of the defendant in withdrawing the various sums from . . . [the] accounts was a breach of trust." No exceptions were taken in the course of the trial. A decree was entered ordering the defendant to redeposit the sums of money in the accounts from which they had been withdrawn and to deliver to the plaintiff the books of deposit. The defendant appealed.
The determination of the interest the plaintiff and the defendant had in the deposits in the joint accounts is dependent primarily on what their intention was, and this is a question of fact. Gibbons v. Gibbons, 296 Mass. 89, 90. Milan v. Boucher, 285 Mass. 590 , 594. The appeal opens all questions of fact, discretion and law presented by the record, and in dealing with questions of fact this court weighs the reported evidence, giving due weight to the findings of the trial judge made upon conflicting oral testimony. For reasons already sufficiently stated in previous decisions "we do not reverse findings of fact made upon . . . [such] testimony unless convinced that they are plainly wrong." Trade Mutual Liability Ins. Co. v. Peters, 291 Mass. 79 , 84, and cases there collected. Markiewicus v. Methuen, 300 Mass. 560 , 561. The question is not what the opinion of this court might be as to the facts on the printed record alone, but whether it can rightly be said that the findings made by the judge who saw the witnesses and heard them testify are plainly wrong. Berman v. Coakley, 257 Mass. 159 , 162.
We have examined the record in the light of these principles. A recital in detail of the evidence in so far as it relates to the deposit in the Institution for Savings in Roxbury and its Vicinity which stood in the...
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