Eyck v. Whitbeck

• Decision Date: 04 October 1892
• Parties: TEN EYCK et al. v. WHITBECK et al.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

135 N.Y. 40

31 N.E. 994

TEN EYCK et al.

v.WHITBECK et al.

Court of Appeals of New York.

Oct. 4, 1892.

Appeal from supreme court, general term, third department.

Action of ejectment by Maria Ten Eyck and Cornelius H. Slingerland against Catharine A. Whitbeck and others. From a judgment of the general term, (15 N. Y. Supp. 418,) affirming a judgment for defendants at circuit, plaintiffs appeal. Reversed.

UNRECORDED DEED-BONA FIDE PURCHASER-CONSIDERATION.

A daughter to whom her father conveys a farm worth $20,000 in consideration of $10, which is paid, and of her undertaking to pay the net proceeds of the place to him during his life, and after his death a certain portion thereof to his wife and other daughter, is not ‘a purchaser in good faith and for a valuable consideration,’ within the meaning of the recording act, so as to entitle her deed to prevail over a prior unrecorded conveyance by the father. Webster v. Van Steenbergh, 46 Barb. 211, and Hendy v. Smith, (Sup.) 2 N. Y. Supp. 535, disapproved. 15 N. Y. Supp. 418, reversed.

N. C. Moak and J. H. Clute, for appellants.

Matthew Hale, for respondents.

MAYNARD, J.

The single question presented by this appeal relates to the rights of the parties under the recording act. The property in controversy is a farm in the town of Coeymans, concededly worth $20,000. Peter W. Ten Eyck is the common source of title. The plaintiffs claim under a deed prior in date; the defendant Catharine Whitbeck under a deed prior in registry. The plaintiffs' conveyance is declared by statute to be void as against the defendant, providing she was a purchaser in good faith and for a valuable consideration. In the sense that she had no notice of the existence of the prior deed, the bona fides of her purchase is not disputed. The issue is therefore narrowed to the question whether she was a purchaser for a valuable consideration. The deed was executed July 7, 1877. The grantor was her father, and it recited a consideration of $10 and the annual payment to the father during his lifetime of the entire net proceeds of the farm, and of one third of such proceeds to his wife during her lifetime, if she survived him, and of one third thereof to another daughter for the same period, and of one half of such proceeds to her after the death of both parents. The grantee was given power to sell the property after the mother's death, and, if sold, the use of one half of the proceeds of sale should be paid to the sister during her life; but the principal should be managed and controlled by the defendant. It was proved that $10 in money was actually paid by her to her father at the time of the execution of the deed. Peter Ten Eyck's family then consisted of his wife and two daughters, who lived with him upon the farm, except the defendant Mrs. Whitbeck, who lived with her husband upon another farm in the same town. Immediate possession was not taken by her under her deed, but her father, with the rest of the family, continued to reside upon the farm, and, by himself and tenants, to manage and control it until his death, in 1883, after which it was in the same manner occupied by the mother and unmarried daughter until the death of the mother in 1885. In September, 1871, Ten Eyck, through an intermediate grantee, conveyed this property to his wife, who, in January, 1883, conveyed it to the plaintiffs. The defendant's deed was recorded December 5, 1879; but Mrs. Ten Eyck's deed, under which the plaintiffs claim, was not recorded until February 21, 1883. After Mrs. Ten Eyck's death the defendant took possession, and the plaintiffs brought this action in ejectment. The defendant challenged the validity of the plaintiffs' title, upon the ground of the mental incompetency of Mr. Ten Eyck, and the undue influence of his wife over him when the deed to her was executed, and of its alleged nondelivery, as well as the nondelivery of the deed from Mrs. Ten Eyck to the plaintiffs; and upon the further ground that Mrs. Ten Eyck's deed was void as to the defendant, under the recording act. The trial court held that the defendant was not a purchaser for a valuable consideration, and was not, therefore, within the protection of the statute; but submitted to the jury the question whether the deeds under which plaintiffs claimed had ever been delivered, and whether Peter W. Ten Eyck was of sound mind, and free from undue influence, when he executed the conveyance to his wife. The verdict was for the defendant, and the general term intimate very plainly that, in their opinion, it was not supported by the evidence, and that they would have set it aside were it not for the decision of the general term in the fifth department in the case of Hendy v. Smith, 2 N. Y. Supp. 535, which holds that a grantee for a consideration of one dollar paid is a purchaser for a valuable consideration, as the terms are used in the recording act. They felt constrained to regard this authority as controlling, and to hold, as matter of law, that the defendant had a superior title because of the prior record of her deed, and that the verdict and judgment were therefore right. The order of affirmance states that, but for the recording acts, the judgment appealed from would have been reversed.

From the relationship of the parties, the recitals in the defendant's deed, and the circumstances attending its execution, as disclosed by the evidence, it is, we think, apparent that she cannot be regarded as a purchaser for a valuable consideration, so as to avoid the effect of the plaintiffs' prior conveyance. While every legal mode of acquisition of real property, except by descent, is denominated in law a ‘purchase,’ and the person who thus acquires it is a purchaser, it is evident that the word is used in this statute in a much more limited sense. It is there applied only to such grants of real estate as are obtained for money, or some other valuable consideration. It denotes a buyer of property, and has reference to one of the actors in a transaction of bargain and sale, which is presumably controlled by commercial considerations. We think it would be a perversion of language to say that a father, who had conveyed to a daughter property of the value of $20,000 for no greater sum than $10 paid, had sold the property to his child, or that she had bought it of him. The transfer would be recognized by the popular, as well as the judicial, mind, as possessing all the essential qualities of a gift. It has been frequently so held. In Hayes v. Kershow, 1 Sandf. Ch. 265, the consideration recited in the deed was one dollar paid, and love and affection, and the vice chancellor said that this nominal sum was not such a valuable consideration as would support a bargain and sale. In Duvoll v. Wilson, 9 Barb. 487, the conveyance was to the grandchildren of the grantor, and recited a consideration of five dollars paid; and it was held that it was not sufficient to support a covenant to stand seised. In Morris v. Ward, 36 N. Y. 587, the conveyance was to a granddaughter, and recited a consideration of one dollar paid and natural love and affection; and this court held that it was an advancement, and not a sale, and that the grantee took as donee, and not as purchaser; and that it was competent, when the whole instrument shows the money consideration to have been intended as nominal merely, to give effect to such proof, and to the intention which it indicates. It is true that in these cases it was assumed or conceded that the nominal money consideration expressed had not been actually paid, but we do not understand that any emphasis was placed upon that fact. The decision in each case seems to have been put upon the ground that the nominal was not the real consideration.

In the case before us every feature of the transaction is indicative of a gift. The grantor was 82 years of age, and the grantee was his eldest daughter. He was evidently conscious that the end of his life was near, and desired to make some final disposition of his real property for the benefit of his family through the medium of this daughter, in whom, for the time being, he seems to have had especial cnfldence. If in the full possession of his mental faculties, he must have known that he had previously conveyed the property to his wife. Apparently there was a struggle between the different members of his household for the possession and control of the farm, which destroyed that quietude and repose so grateful to old age. He may have thought that in this way he could appease both factions, trusting that each might remain in ignorance of the status of the other until he died, when the result of the complications which he had...