Harrod v. Simmons

• Decision Date: 10 August 1962
• Docket Number: No. 3190,3190
• Parties: Inezze HARROD, Appellant, v. W. J. SIMMONS as Administrator of the Estate of Thomas Ivey Simmons; Moses Wallace Simmons; Lora Belle Schuler; Nellie Lorene Lindsay; Mandy Mae Putnam; and Lois Wahnell Green, Appellees.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 717

143 So.2d 717

Inezze HARROD, Appellant, v. W. J. SIMMONS as Administrator of the Estate of Thomas Ivey Simmons; Moses Wallace Simmons; Lora Belle Schuler; Nellie Lorene Lindsay; Mandy Mae Putnam; and Lois Wahnell Green, Appellees.

No. 3190.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District.

Aug. 10, 1962.

Morton J. Hanlon of Summerlin & Connor, Winter Haven, for appellant.

Corcoran & Henson, Tampa, for appellees.

KANNER, Judge.

Love and affection was the consideration for certain properties purportedly conveyed to plaintiff, appellant here, by her father one year before his death. The suit against defendants-appellees, the other heirs-at-law, brothers and sisters of appellant, and against the administrator of the estate of the father sought reformation of the deed of conveyance so as to include in it a described piece of real property which appellant asserts was intended to be deeded to her but was mistakenly omitted. From order of the chancellor dismissing the amended complaint with prejudice, the appeal has been instituted.

Alleged in the amended complaint are the essential facts comprising the background of the dispute. Decedent, accompanied by appellant daughter, visited an attorney for the purpose of engaging him to prepare his last will and testament. The father informed the attorney that, although he had six children and six stepchildren, he wished to have all his property pass only to appellant daughter upon his death to compensate her for love and affection. Pursuant to advice of the attorney, decedent executed conveyance with reservation for life estate in himself. He also executed an affidavit stating that it was his intention to convey his properties to appellant to compensate her for love and affection shown him.

Appellant's argument on behalf of reformation is premised upon a sole appeal question. The problem which it advances is whether a court of equity, regardless of availability of written evidence of the grantor's intention, will refuse to reform a deed where a mistake was made in copying the description of the property intended to be conveyed because love and affection motivated the transfer by the grantor, although the grantor was deceased prior to the attempt at reformation.

Through the stated point appellant quotes and protests application in equity of the rule of law laid down in the case of Triesback v. Tyler, Fla.1911, 62 Fla. 580, 56 So. 947, cited by the chancellor as being preclusive of the reformation sought. The Supreme Court through that pronouncement said, 'The difficulty with the case arises upon the consideration supporting the deed, which appears to have been only love and affection. This consideration is sufficient to uphold a deed as written, but it seems that it will not alone support an equity in the grantee to reform the deed.'

Appellant points to the affidavit of the deceased as demonstrating his intention to convey the property in controversy, urging that the quoted rule should be limited in its application to suits for reformation brought during the lifetime of a grantor and a grantee and concluding that equity should intervene to reform the deed here so as to effectuate the true intent of the parties.

The court in Triesback v. Tyler considered and reversed a decree for reformation which had been entered for the plaintiff. The instrument involved...