Edwards v. Edwards

• Decision Date: 25 November 1924
• Docket Number: Case Number: 14128
• Citation: 233 P. 477,1924 OK 1050,108 Okla. 93
• Parties: EDWARDS et al. v. EDWARDS.
• Court: Oklahoma Supreme Court

1924 OK 1050

233 P. 477

108 Okla. 93

EDWARDS et al. v. EDWARDS.

Case Number: 14128

Supreme Court of Oklahoma

Decided: November 25, 1924

Syllabus

¶0 1. Appeal and Error--Preserving Error -- Overruling Demurrer.

No question of law is presented to this court for review by an assignment that the trial court committed error in overruling the defendants' demurrer to plaintiff's petition, where it fails to appear that an exception to the order was taken to the time and preserved in the record.

2. Property--Title--Fruits of Illegal Enterprise.

While it is true that courts will not lend their remedies to consummate illegal or immoral transactions, or to cause to be enforced contracts based upon illegal considerations, yet when such transactions have been fully completed, and the gains and profits arising therefrom are such as the law recognizes as subject to private ownership, the control and disposition thereof is cognizable by the courts as if the property had not been the subject of the illegal transaction or enterprise. Legitimate property, when the means of acquisition thereof is not an issue as to ownership, howsoever acquired, is the subject-matter of legal rights.

3. Appeal and Error -- Review of Equity Case--Findings--Conclusiveness.

Assignments of certain specific findings of fact made by the trial court as error, cannot be sustained here, when made in a cause of purely equitable cognizance, unless such findings are clearly against the weight of the evidence. In the instant case, plaintiff not only pleaded the essential, salient, and controlling facts necessary to sustain her cause of action, but also pleaded the community property law of the state of Texas as the law fixing her rights in the property involved herein. The findings of the trial court as to each is well supported by the record.

4. Trusts--Constructive Trust -- Husband and Wife--Rights of Wife in Community Property. The findings of the trial court were in part that certain specific personal property described in the decree was accumulated by plaintiff and her husband, while citizens of Ranger, Texas, and the money which purchased the real estate and mortgage notes was likewise accumulated there; that the community property law of the state of Texas is to the effect that all property acquired by either husband or wife during marriage, except that acquired by gift, devise, or descent, is the common property of both; that on removing to Oklahoma, the law of this state attached and governed the rights of the husband and wife to all such property; that the amount of the same belonging to the community was found to be $ 50,828; that in said amount the plaintiff had a vested one-half interest, which was in the possession of the husband. Held, that the husband was the trustee of one-half of said amount in his possession, for the benefit of the plaintiff.

5. Same--Pursuit of Trust Property.

Certain real estate and mortgage notes were purchased by the plaintiff's husband with money belonging to plaintiff, the title to which was caused by him to be placed in the name of the defendant Cora E. Edwards, for the purpose of depriving plaintiff fraudulently of the trust property. Under this state of facts, a constructive trust was created in said property for plaintiff. If the value of the property so purchased, together with the other property held by him in trust for her, likewise traced into the hands of the said defendant, does not exceed the amount held by him as trustee for plaintiff's benefit, the decree of the trial court stamping such property with a constructive trust--for benefit of the plaintiff--is not erroneous, where it is not shown that any part of the property and money held in trust for her benefit had been otherwise disposed of with her consent.

6. Estoppel--Election of Remedies as Estoppel.

On the 29th day of March, 1921, plaintiff herein filed in the district court of Oklahoma county a suit against her husband, W. L Edwards, seeking alimony, and in such suit she alleged, among other things, that she had been a resident of the state of Oklahoma for a period of one year prior thereto. The allegations of the petition filed in that suit were pleaded by the defendants in this action as constituting an estoppel by election of remedies against the plaintiff, from either (a) seeking the remedy asked in the instant suit, or (b) claiming that she was a resident of the state of Texas at any time within a year prior to March 29, 1921. Plaintiff's husband departed this life 5 days after the filing of the first-named suit. Held, that since the first action did not proceed to judgment and no advantage was gained thereby for plaintiff, and no detriment was suffered by the defendants, the doctrine of election of remedies and estoppel on account thereof to pursue the remedy sought by the instant action cannot be successfully urged.

7. Husband and Wife--Community Property--Trusts--Burden of Proof.

Under the community property law of the state of Texas as pleaded and found herein, all property in the name or possession of either spouse belongs prima facie to the community, and where one of the spouses traces the same into other species of property, the title thereto being taken in a third party, without consideration being paid by said third party in good faith therefor, and the said third party seeks to show, as a defense against a constructive trust being declared in favor of plaintiff, that the property was the accumulation of money advanced by them for investment, the burden is on such party to show the same. Record in the instant case examined, and held, that there was nothing to disclose that the property here in question was separate property, within the meaning of the law, or that the same was accumulated, by reason of any money advanced by, and invested for, the defendants.

8. Trusts--Constructive Trusts--Pursuit of Property.

If a trustee or other fiduciary person, having money or any other kind of property belonging to another in his hands, wrongfully or fraudulently uses the same for the purchase of real estate or personal property, taking the title thereto in the name of another, equity impresses a constructive trust upon the new form or species of property, wherever found, and into whosesoever hands it may be traced or identified, except in those of a bona fide purchaser for value, without notice of the trust character thereof.

Cress & Tebbe, for plaintiffs in error.

Moman Pruiett, Williams & Luttrell, and Chas. H. Garnett, for defendant in error.

BRANSON, J.

¶1 It is unnecessary to discuss the proceedings ancillary to the main questions, and which had for their purpose the maintenance of the status quo of the property pending this litigation. We go to the main questions. The suit is in equity and is for the purpose of having a trust decreed in certain real and personal property in favor of the plaintiff. Annabelle Edwards was the plaintiff in the district court. The relief sought was against Cora E. Edwards (Mrs. J. H. Edwards) and J. H. Edwards (husband of Cora E. Edwards) and Cora E. Edwards as executrix of the will of W. L. Edwards, deceased. The plaintiff secured a decree in the trial court, and the defendants appeal. Herein they will be referred to as they bore the relation plaintiff and defendants in the trial court. W. L. Edwards, known to his acquaintances, and hereinafter referred to, as Billy Edwards, was the son of the defendants. He died on April 3, 1921, a resident of Oklahoma county. The plaintiff is his widow. She and Billy became acquainted in the Healdton oil district in this state about 1917, and were married in Galveston, Tex., in the summer of 1918. In the spring of 1919 they moved to the Ranger and Desdemona oil districts (then booming), in the state of Texas becoming citizens of said state, and voting there. At the close of 1920, they moved back to Oklahoma, becoming citizens and residents of Oklahoma City. At the time of moving to Texas, not long returned from the army camp Billy had little or no money. Annabelle was in not much better financial condition. They undertook to make money in the Lone Star State, and the rapidity of its acquisition necessarily will appear herein. The diligence and fidelity of each to this purpose cannot be fairly questioned from the record. She did her part, he knowing what it was; and he did his part, she knowing what that was. Much is drawn out in the record as to the questionable character of the businesses they conducted there; and the extended and learned elaboration thereon by the lawyers all but takes us into fields of jurisprudence into which the tether of this case will not permit us going. No more will be said herein, as to the character of the businesses from which the fortune involved herein so quickly came, than is necessary, for Billy has passed beyond the realm of controversial refutation, and the heart of the survivor of this marital union has no doubt expiated it with sorrow, and her eyes with tears. In substance and effect, the plaintiff's petition set out her marriage to Billy Edwards, the accumulation of the property, alleged to be approximately $ 80,000, at Ranger, Tex., during the years 1919 and 1920; that he and she were residents and citizens of the state of Texas during said time, and specifically pleaded the provisions of the Constitution and statutes of Texas as to community property; their removal to Olklahoma at the close of 1920, and the investment of the money accumulated in Texas in the property as to which a trust is sought to be declared. The defendants' answer in substance and effect denied the allegations of the plaintiff, and set up that they had from time to time furnished Billy Edwards money to invest for them, and that the properties that he had in the state of Texas were the accumulations therefrom; that the plaintiff knew that Billy Edwards was engaged in the gambling business in the Texas oil fields, and that the money accumulated by him was...