Dixon v. Dixon

• Decision Date: 10 February 1916
• Docket Number: 88.
• Parties: DIXON et al. v. DIXON et al.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

96 A. 1027

128 Md. 1

DIXON et al. v. DIXON et al.

No. 88.

Court of Appeals of Maryland

February 10, 1916

Appeal from Circuit Court, Dorchester County, in Equity; Robley D Jones, Judge.

"To be officially reported."

Suit by James S. Dixon and others against Helen V. Dixon and others. From a decree in favor of defendants, the plaintiffs appeal. Affirmed.

Argued before BOYD, C.J., and BRISCOE, BURKE, THOMAS, URNER STOCKBRIDGE, and CONSTABLE, JJ.

Clement Sulivane, of Cambridge, and Alonzo L. Miles, of Salisbury for appellants. T. Sangston Insley and Emerson C. Harrington both of Cambridge, for appellees.

URNER J.

The appeal in this case is from a decree dismissing a bill of complaint whose object was to procure the annulment of certain gifts made by a deceased debtor in his lifetime and alleged to have been in fraud of the plaintiffs as his creditors. From the voluminous record before us, in which the real and simple issues of the case have been incumbered with a great mass of irrelevant testimony, we have extracted the following material facts:

In the year 1883 Dr. Richard H. Dixon, of Dorchester county, was indebted on open account to Rebecca H. Stewart, the mother of his deceased wife, in the sum of $3,997.28, with interest from January 1st of that year. This account was assigned by Mrs. Stewart on July 21, 1883, to the four children of Dr. Dixon, being her own grandchildren, in the following proportions: To Helen S. Dixon $600 of the amount due; and the remainder to James S. Dixon, Helen S. Dixon, William Lee Dixon, and Nannie S. Dixon in equal shares. A second marriage was contracted by Dr. Dixon in the year 1885, and two children, Richard H. Dixon, Jr., and Marie Dixon, were born of that union. On April 15, 1912, Dr. Dixon died, survived by his wife, Helen V. Dixon, and all of his above-named children by both marriages. About two years prior to his death he acknowledged in writing the existence of the indebtedness to which we have referred. In March, 1903, Dr. Dixon made and delivered to his wife a promissory note payable to her order for the sum of $500. On April 7, 1905, he gratuitously released of record a mortgage for $4,000 which he held against her property. In January, 1907, he conveyed to her as a gift, by deed duly recorded, the home in which they were living, estimated in the evidence to be worth $10,000. Towards the close of the same year he assigned by way of gift to his son Richard H. Dixon, Jr., a real estate mortgage for the sum of $1,000, and to his daughter Marie ten shares of the capital stock of the National Bank of Cambridge, valued at $1,750, the latter transfer being confirmed in March, 1909, when this daughter became 18 years of age. These dispositions in favor of the wife and the two younger children are sought to be set aside in this suit by the four children of the first marriage, as being in prejudice of their rights as creditors under the assignment made to them by their grandmother in 1883.

In addition to the property involved in the transfers just mentioned, and during the period when they were being made, Dr. Dixon was the owner of real and personal estate aggregating about $14,000 in value. From 1905 to 1907 he paid more than $8,000 as surety on obligations of his son, W. Lee Dixon, who assigned $3,000 worth of securities to his father by way of partial reimbursement. The assets thus received were transferred by Dr. Dixon to his daughter Nannie as a gift, some time in 1911, together with other securities amounting in value to $1,450. At the time of his death in 1912 Dr. Dixon's estate was worth only a few hundred dollars. After he had conveyed the home property to his wife in January, 1907, he was still the owner of real estate to the value of $7,600, and of securities to the amount of $9,900. During the year 1907 he sold his remaining realty, and at the close of that year, after he had assigned the $1,000 mortgage to his son Richard and his Cambridge bank stock to his daughter Marie, his estate consisted of personal assets having an estimated value of $8,500.

When Dr. Dixon made the various transfers to the wife and children of his second marriage, he was indebted to the plaintiffs, according to their theory, in an amount approximating $8,300 on the open account previously mentioned; the greater part of the sum thus alleged to be due representing interest charges on the original debt. The proportionate amount of this claim to which W. Lee Dixon may have been entitled was largely exceeded by the liability he incurred to his father on account of the payments made by the latter as his surety. The interest of Nannie S. Dixon in the claim is likewise of much less value than the gifts she received from her father's estate subsequently to the transfers now being contested. It is apparent that neither of these parties can equitably complain of donations to the defendants, as prejudicing the plaintiff's rights as creditors of their father, when the benefactions they have themselves received from the same source have served to reduce the estate to a much greater extent than the amounts of their respective shares of the claim here sought to be enforced. For the purposes of this case, therefore, the interests of the two last-named claimants may be dismissed from further consideration.

The combined claims of the other two plaintiffs, James S. and Helen S. Dixon, on account of the indebtedness stated in the original bill of complaint, amounted, with interest, to about $5,000 when the last of the gifts now in dispute was made at the end of the year 1907. After the cause had been set for final hearing a petition was filed by James S....