Hall v. Meade

• Decision Date: 24 June 1932
• Citation: 244 Ky. 718
• Parties: Hall et al. v. Meade et al.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court — District of Kentucky

244 Ky. 718

Hall et al. v. Meade et al.

Court of Appeals of Kentucky.

Decided June 24, 1932.

1. Deeds. — Deed reserving to grantor and wife usufruct of property during their lives or life of survivor does not violate rules against estates to vest in future, nor forbidding reservation of estate to stranger or one not party.

2. Deeds — Court must ascertain grantor's intention from words employed in deed, subject matter, and attending circumstances.

3. Deeds. — If possible, deed should be construed to give proper effect to each clause as well as whole thereof.

4. Deeds. — If grantor's intention is manifest, deed should be construed without regard to technical rules of construction.

The effort is, and should be, to get at parties' intention, and if their intention can be determined, it will control, though it be inaptly or awkardly expressed or out of touch with other parts of instrument.

5. Deeds. — Deed held to reserve to grantor and wife right to use land, timber, and mineral privileges in any manner necessary for their comfortable support during their lives or life of survivor.

By formal deeds, grantor and his wife conveyed different portions of land belonging to grantor to children and grand-children of grantor by his first wife, each deed reciting consideration of $1 and love and affection, and that, "The parties of the first part reserve the right to use and occupy said tract of land during their natural lives or to sell and dispose of coal, oil or gas should they so desire, during their natural lives." When deeds were executed, grantor and his wife were occupying land in controversy, receiving proceeds of operation of oil and gas leases thereon, and they owned no other land, so that it was plain that they did not by the deeds intend to deprive themselves of the occupancy, use, and benefit of the usufruct of the land, nor the royalty payments under the leases during their entire lives or life of survivor.

Appeal from Floyd Circuit Court.

JAMES & HOBSON and EUGENE B. WETHERILL for appellants.

COMBS & COMBS for appellees.

OPINION OF THE COURT BY JUDGE RICHARDSON.

Affirming in part and reversing in part.

Martin Meade and Anne Meade were husband and wife residing in Floyd county, Ky., on the 12th day of June, 1926. In August, 1923, Martin Meade was the owner of 150 acres of land situated in Floyd county, which was by a lease signed and acknowledged by himself and wife and delivered to W.P. Crow, leased for oil and gas for a term of five years, and so long thereafter as oil or gas was produced. Crow assigned the lease, in 1928, to the Inland Gas Company which entered upon the land and drilled a well which produced gas in paying quantities. The lease contained a provision for the payment of a royalty of $400 per year, payable each three months in advance, so long as gas was marketed off the premises. The Inland Gas Corporation has continuously since marketed the gas, paying the royalty until the filing of this action.

In June, 1926, Martin Meade and Anna Meade executed and delivered, for $1 cash and love and affection for their granddaughter Sula Hackworth and her husband Bruce Hackworth, a deed conveying to them 50 acres of the same land. Simultaneously, they executed and delivered to the bodily heirs of Hulda Jane Compton, deceased, a daughter of Martin Meade, for the consideration of $1 and love and affection, a deed for 50 acres. For the recited consideration of love and affection and $1, they executed and delivered a deed to Bessie Hall, a daughter of Martin Meade, conveying to her 50 acres of land. The deeds are formal in every respect, except each of them contains, between the description of the boundary and the habendum, this language:

"The parties of the first part reserve the right to use and occupy said tract of land during their natural lives, or to sell and dispose of coal, oil or gas, should they so desire, during their natural lives."

The deeds were caused to be placed of record in the county in which the land was situated. No children were born to Martin Meade and Anna Meade. The grantees in the deed were the daughters and the children of a deceased daughter of Martin Meade by a former wife. Martin Meade departed this life, and the vendees in the deeds began to set up title to the land and to dispute the authority and right of Anna Meade to receive the royalty payable under the lease held by the Inland Gas Company. She filed this action in which she sought to be decreed the owner in fee of the land, including the minerals, oil, and gas, with the right to sell, convey, and lease the same, and to receive the rents and profits due, and to become due, under the lease held by the Inland Gas Corporation, and to have her title quieted.

She averred that by a proper construction of the deeds they reserved to her the relief sought, but that if the language therein was not sufficient for that purpose, she asked that each of them be reformed so as to convey to her the title in fee. The vendees in the deeds by answer controverted the allegations of her pleading and asserted that the clause in each deed, which attempted to reserve to her any right or title to the land, was void, and that they were entitled to the possession of the land as well as the right to collect the royalty under the lease owned by the Inland Gas Corporation. The trial court determined the case on the evidence and the deeds introduced by the parties, and decreed that Anna Meade was not entitled to have the deed reformed, and that the reservations in the deeds were void, but that Anna Meade was entitled to and had the same interest in the land and the oil and gas royalties that a widow has in every such case where the lease was executed and delivered by her and her husband, during his lifetime; that she was entitled to the land as a homestead, it being worth less than $1,000; and that the reservations in the deeds merely protected her in this homestead right. The vendees in the deed have prosecuted from the judgment, this appeal, and Anna Meade has been granted by this court a cross-appeal.

From our view of the case it is unnecessary to consider the evidence introduced by the parties. The deeds control their rights. The appellants are insisting that Anna Meade had no interest whatsoever in the land owned by Martin Meade at the time of his death, and occupies the same relation to the deeds as if she were not a party to them, and that the reservations in the deeds are, therefore, void, and that the court erred in holding that she was entitled to the right of a widow. To sustain this argument they cite and rely on section 490, Ky. Stats.; Justice v. Justice, 239 Ky. 155, 39 S.W. (2d) 250; Higdon v. Nichols, 204 Ky. 56, 263 S.W. 665; Reynolds v. Towell, 11 S.W. 202, 10 Ky. Law Rep. 932; Gibson v. Porter, 15 S.W. 871, 12 Ky. Law Rep. 917; Beinlein v. Johns, 102 Ky. 570, 44 S.W. 128, 19 Ky. Law Rep. 1969; Allen v. Henson, 186 Ky. 201, 217 S.W. 120; Chappell v. Chappell (Ky.) 119 S.W. 218, 219; Francis v. Combs, 221 Ky. 644, 299 S.W. 543; Hill v. Pettit, 66 S.W. 188, 23 Ky. Law Rep. 2001; Morris v. Gilliam, 213 Ky. 763, 281 S.W. 1026; Roberts v. Combs, 226 Ky. 97, 10 S.W. (2d) 608; Duncan v. Jenkins, 215 Ky. 543, 286 S.W. 783; Beardslee v. New Berlin Light & Power Co., 207 N.Y. 34, 100 N.E. 434, 436, Ann. Cas. 1914B, 1287; Lemon v. Lemon, 273 Mo. 484, 201 S.W. 103, 107.

The rule deducible from these cases may well be stated in the language of the court in Beardslee v. New Berlin Light & Power Company, supra:

"It is elementary law, stated in every text-book on the subject, that a reservation or exception in favor of a stranger to a conveyance is void or inoperative.. . . A reservation is something taken back from what has been granted, but that which is excepted is not granted at all."

This principle was recognized and applied by this court in Allen v. Henson, supra. The appellants urgently insist that when section 490, Ky. St., and this rule are applied herein, the clauses in the deeds are void as to Anna Meade. They argue that the present case is especially controlled by the law as stated in Beardslee v. New Berlin Light & Power Co., supra. In Lemon v. Lemon, supra, the owner of the land, by a deed joined in by his wife, conveyed land by deed regular in form, with covenant of warranty, to his son, which provided that the wife did not relinquish her right of dower or homestead if she survived the husband, but reserved to her a life estate in the property. Or, in other words, the grantors were to have the use and profit from it as long as they or either of them should live. At the time of the execution of the deed, the husband and wife resided on the land, and thereafter they purchased a home in Vandalia, Mo.,...