Charles v. Pickens

• Citation: 112 S.W. 551,214 Mo. 212
• Parties: CHARLES et al. v. PICKENS et al.
• Decision Date: 14 July 1908
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Missouri

112 S.W. 551

214 Mo. 212

CHARLES et al. v. PICKENS et al.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 2.

July 14, 1908.

1. APPEAL AND ERROR—REVIEW—FINDINGS OF COURT—CONCLUSIVENESS.

Findings of fact by the trial court are conclusive on appeal.

2. ADVERSE POSSESSION—NATURE—TACKING SUCCESSIVE POSSESSIONS—LIFE TENANT AND REMAINDERMEN.

Where a grantor had been in adverse possession for a long period, and then conveyed the land to his daughters for life, remainder to their heirs, the continuing possession of the daughters and their grantees inured to the benefit of the heirs as remaindermen, and such possession cannot be asserted to destroy their remainder by defendants, who claimed through the life tenants.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Newton County; F. C. Johnston, Judge.

Action by Betsy Ann Charles and others against Jake Pickens and others. From a judgment for defendants, plaintiffs appeal. Reversed and remanded for new trial.

Horace Ruark and Sturgis & Geyer, for appellants. Geo. Hubbert and Clay & Sheppard, for respondents.

GANTT, J.

This is a proceeding by the plaintiffs against the defendants under section 650, Rev. St. 1899 (Ann. St. 1906, p. 667), to adjudge and declare the title to certain lands in Newton county, Mo. The land in controversy is a part and parcel of the land described in the deed from Stephen D. Sutton and his wife to his five daughters and executed in 1860, and recorded in Book F, p. 136, in the office of the recorder of Newton county. The cause was tried in the circuit court along with the two cases of Betsy Ann Charles et al. v. Thomas White et al. and George A. Neill et al., and the record is in all essential features the same as those in the two cases above mentioned and presents the same questions of law already discussed in the opinion handed down at this time in those cases, with the exception that in this case additional questions are presented with relation to the title of Sutton and as to whether he had any estate that might be conveyed by his said deed, and, if not, whether the defendant Pickens is estopped to deny Sutton's title and hold the land against the plaintiffs. As to the effect of the conveyance from Sutton and wife to his five daughters and the heirs of their body, and as to the effect of the decree in the case of Rutledge v. Charles et al., the same consideration must control, and, accordingly, in our opinion the said deed of Sutton to Betsy Ann Charles et al., his five daughters, and "the heirs of their body," of date October 25, 1860, had the effect of conveying a life estate to each of the said daughters, in said lands, with a remainder over to "the heirs of their bodies," and that the decree of the circuit court of Newton county in the case of Rutledge v. Betsy Ann Charles et al., of March 15, 1872, in so far as it undertook to divest the title of the said life tenants and remaindermen acquired under and by virtue of the said...