Culp v. Wilson

• Decision Date: 05 January 1893
• Docket Number: 16,015
• Citation: 32 N.E. 928,133 Ind. 294
• Parties: Culp et al. v. Wilson
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

32 N.E. 928

133 Ind. 294

Culp et al. v. Wilson

16,015

Supreme Court of Indiana

January 5, 1893

From the Elkhart Circuit Court.

Judgment affirmed.

H. C Dodge and J. S. Dodge, for appellants.

H. D Wilson and W. J. Davis, for appellee.

OPINION

Coffey, C. J.

On the 20th day of October, 1890, the appellee, Harvey C. Wilson, as administrator of the estate of Samuel Kessler, deceased filed his final report, in which was shown a balance of $ 1,411.68 on hands for distribution among the heirs of the deceased. In this report it was stated by the administrator that he had been credibly informed that the deceased, in his lifetime, had advanced the appellants, his three daughters, Isabelle P. McDowell, Miranda Culp and Ann Shupert, in land of the value of three thousand dollars, and upward, more than he had advanced and paid to his daughter, Amanda Lentz.

The appellants appeared and filed such pleadings as were necessary to make an issue upon this statement, which issue was tried by the court, resulting in a finding and judgment in favor of Amanda Lentz. From the finding and judgment of the court, this appeal is prosecuted.

It is contended by the appellants that the finding of the court is not sustained by the evidence, the proof showing that such sums as were received by the appellants were gifts and not advancements.

In the bill of exceptions containing the evidence, we find the following admission: "It is admitted by the parties hereto that each of the heirs of Samuel Kessler, except Mrs. Lentz, received from their father, Samuel Kessler, during his lifetime, land to the amount of more than the amount of funds in the hands of the administrator for distribution."

Other evidence in the record tends to prove that the land received by each of the appellants was worth near four thousand dollars.

In Ruch, adm'r, v. Biery, 110 Ind. 444, 11 N.E. 312, it was said: "An advancement, in legal contemplation, is the giving by a parent to a child, by way of anticipation, of the whole or a part of that which it is supposed the child will be entitled to on the death of the parent, or person making the advancement."

A voluntary conveyance of land by the parent to one of his children is presumed to have been intended as an advancement, and the burden of showing that it was not so intended rests upon the person who asserts it to be anything else.

So when it becomes necessary, in a case involving the question of advancement, to ascertain the intention with which a donor conveyed property, so long as there is no satisfactory evidence to the contrary, the law looking to the...