Cooper v. Cooper
| Decision Date | 05 January 1954 |
| Citation | 69 So.2d 881 |
| Parties | COOPER et al. v. COOPER. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Bentley & Shafer and Herbert N. Casebier, Lakeland, for appellants.
Raymond C. Smith and Ernest Webb, Lakeland, for appellee.
Primarily this is a contest between J. L. Cooper and Grace Cooper, formerly man and wife, the appellant, Ethel Mulkey Cooper being only incidentally involved, so we will refer to the parties as 'appellant' and 'appellee'.
After dissension between the man and his wife had lasted for a considerable period during which a divorce suit was instituted and dismissed, and arrangements affecting community property had been made and unmade a new suit for divorce was instituted by the appellee against the appellant and the bonds of matrimony were severed.
About the time the last suit was started the parties met and the wife signed and delivered to the husband a paper reading as follows:
'Feb. 12-1949
'Signed Mrs. J. L. Cooper'
From the testimony in the record of the instant case it appears that the substance of the informal paper we have copied was put in legal form by an attorney and signed by the parties but this instrument was not brought here for our examination. At any rate it seems reasonable to interpret the transaction as an attempt by the parties to adjust their property rights in anticipation of the divorce.
A short time afterward, 25 March 1949, two deeds were executed by the husband and wife before a notary and the clerk of the circuit court of Polk County conveying to the husband three tracts of land then owned by them as estates by the entireties. We apprehend that this was done to effectuate the wife's agreement 'to sign My part of all Property & Belongings to him,' that is, all her part except the cash and personal property she was to receive and, we understand, did receive.
The divorce suit then progressed to a final decree and both parties have remarried.
The present suit was instituted by the former wife against the former husband to have set aside the deeds to which we have referred, to have cancelled a mortgage on the property given by the man, to have the parties declared tenants in common, and to have the property sold and the proceeds distributed.
We go now to an analysis of the bill. First there appears a rather brief history of the fiscal affairs of the two principals from the time of their marriage until their separation and a picture of how their fortunes waxed and waned, with sidelights on their domestic difficulties. This introduces the occasion when the deeds were executed. According to her bill the woman was walking along the street when the man drove alongside and ordered her into his car. She obeyed, thinking he intended to take her home but instead he reversed his course and when she attempted to get out he 'violently grabbed and pinched the plaintiff's legs * * *.' He then drove to the court house and took the woman to the clerk's office where the 'two deeds had been prepared or were being prepared and completed.' When the instruments were ready the man told her to sign. 'She did sign them without any explanation given to her and she requested no explanation for the reason that she feared the violence and threats and abuse of J. L. Cooper if she did not sign the deeds.' At this point we say that hitherto the pleading has been silent of threats, and that violence and abuse consisted only of his grabbing her and pinching her legs.
Immediately following is the bald charge that she signed the deeds 'under threats, duress and compulsion * * * without semblance of any consideration to herself or otherwise.' The allegations of duress are wholly insufficient because no statement connects them with the execution of the deeds, nor did the pleader set out what was threatened to be done if she refused to sign. The man was doubtless in foul humor but the allegations of duress and compulsion are so vague as to amount to nothing more than conclusions. The averment about 'consideration' is no stronger, as we know from the paper she signed that she did receive certain personal property which, or the proceeds of which, she still has so far as the record shows.
Parenthetically, a mortgage on a part of the lands was executed by the man and his new wife so the mortgagees were made parties to this suit, but no part of the presentation is peculiar to this transaction so there is no need further to discuss it.
The chancellor restricted his consideration to the relief sought in paragraphs three and four of the bill, i. e., cancellation of the mortgage and the deeds, declaration that the appellee and her former husband held the property as ...
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Davis v. Dieujuste
...400 So.2d at 982. Relying on this Court's decisions in Finston v. Finston, 160 Fla. 935, 37 So.2d 423 (Fla.1948) and Cooper v. Cooper, 69 So.2d 881 (Fla.1954), the district court below concluded that such rights are finally settled upon dissolution. The district court held "res judicata con......
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Smith v. Paul Revere Life Ins. Co., 95-6960-CIV-GOLD.
...external pressure that destroys the free agency of the party compelled to act in a manner not of his or her own volition. Cooper v. Cooper, 69 So.2d 881 (Fla.1954). "Undue influence must amount to over-persuasion, duress, force, coercion, or artful or fraudulent contrivances to such a degre......
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City of Miami v. Kory
...destroys the free agency of a party and causes him to do an act or make a contract not of his own volition. Accord, e. g., Cooper v. Cooper, 69 So.2d 881 (Fla. 1954); Corporacion Peruana de Aeropuertosy Aviacion Comercial v. Boy, 180 So.2d 503 (Fla. 2d DCA 1965). As this formulation of the ......
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Wooten v. Rhodus
...Sistrunk, 235 So.2d 53 (Fla. 4th DCA 1970). It applies whether a particular property right was actually litigated or not. Cooper v. Cooper, 69 So.2d 881 (Fla.1954); Diejuste v. Davis, 400 So.2d 981 (Fla. 4th DCA 1981); Estabrook v. Wise, 348 So.2d 355 (Fla. 1st DCA), cert. denied, 354 So.2d......