Farmers & Merchants National Bank of Fremont v. Worden

• Decision Date: 03 December 1915
• Docket Number: 18450
• Citation: 155 N.W. 604,99 Neb. 119
• Parties: FARMERS & MERCHANTS NATIONAL BANK OF FREMONT ET AL., APPELLEES, v. SHERMAN D. WORDEN ET AL.; MARGARET WORDEN, APPELLANT
• Court: Nebraska Supreme Court

155 N.W. 604

99 Neb. 119

FARMERS & MERCHANTS NATIONAL BANK OF FREMONT ET AL., APPELLEES, v. SHERMAN D. WORDEN ET AL.; MARGARET WORDEN, APPELLANT

No. 18450

Supreme Court of Nebraska

December 3, 1915

APPEAL from the district court for Boone county: GEORGE H. THOMAS JUDGE. Reversed, with directions.

REVERSED.

Frank D. Williams, J. A. Price and C. J. Campbell, for appellant.

M. B Foster, A. E. Garten and W. J. Courtright, contra.

ROSE J. SEDGWICK, J., not sitting.

OPINION

ROSE, J.

By means of a bill of sale reciting the consideration to be $ 3,680.05, Sherman D. Worden, defendant, transferred to his mother, Margaret Worden, defendant, personal property, consisting of cattle, grain and farm implements. Plaintiffs are judgment creditors of the transferor. The present action was brought for the purpose, among others, of subjecting to the payment of the judgments in favor of plaintiffs the property described in the bill of sale. The transferee defended the action on the ground that the transfer to her was made in good faith, for a valuable consideration, without any intention of defrauding creditors of transferor or of hindering or delaying them in the collection of their claims. The trial court rendered a decree in favor of plaintiffs, and the transferee has appealed.

What a court of equity should decree under the evidence is the question presented by the appeal. With a view to reaching a correct conclusion, the testimony has been considered from every standpoint in the light of all of the circumstances proved, without finding any justification for setting aside the transfer. The bill of sale was executed January 28, 1911. The judgments at law on which the creditors' bill is based were not rendered until July 26, 1911. Uncontradicted testimony of the parties to the bill of sale tends to establish the following facts: From 1905 to 1910 the transferor, as tenant under an oral lease, lived with his father and mother on their homestead, consisting of a farm in Boone county. During the first and second years of the tenancy the crops were to be divided. For the remainder of the five-year period, the agreed rental, payable to the father of the tenant, was $ 500 a year in cash. The son had agreed to pay his mother for boarding him and his hired men $ 12 a month each. He sold live stock belonging to her and owed her the value thereof. During the five-year tenancy, he incurred an indebtedness to his mother aggregating about $ 1,800, which remained unpaid at the date of the transfer. He failed to pay his father the agreed rental, but executed and delivered to him a note for $ 1,850, November 10, 1910. His father died November 30, 1910. On his deathbed he handed the note to his son, and directed him, in case anything happened to pay it directly to his mother. Early in December, following the death of the father, the son...