Huffine v. Lincoln
| Decision Date | 28 October 1916 |
| Docket Number | 3684. |
| Parties | HUFFINE v. LINCOLN ET AL. |
| Court | Montana Supreme Court |
Appeal from District Court, Fergus County; J. B. Poindexter Presiding Judge.
Action by Leonie Huffine against Alvin R. Lincoln and others. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendants appeal. Affirmed.
E. K Cheadle, of Lewistown, and Gunn, Rasch & Hall, of Helena, for appellants.
J. C Huntoon and E. W. Mettler, both of Lewistown, and Walsh, Nolan & Scallon, of Helena, for respondent.
Stripped of legal verbiage, the findings of fact in this case are: That on September 18, 1903, Alvin R. Lincoln and Mary E. Lincoln were husband and wife, living together as such; that Mary E. Lincoln was the owner in her own right of certain real estate which she then intended, and for a long time had intended, to convey to their only daughter, Leonie Huffine; that she was then dangerously ill and, resolving to carry out such intention, advised her husband accordingly; that he, possessing influence over her by reason of their confidential relations as husband and wife, exerted that influence to induce, and did induce, her to convey the property to him; that no consideration passed for such conveyance except his promise and agreement to devise all said property and all his own real estate to their daughter and their son, George R. Lincoln, in equal shares, upon which promise and agreement Mary E. Lincoln completely relied and but for which she would not have conveyed the property to him; that he then and there, as a part performance of said agreement and as a further inducement, executed such will and delivered the same to Leonie; that thereafter, and on October 6, 1903, Mary E. Lincoln died, leaving as heirs at law her husband, the defendant Alvin R. Lincoln, her daughter, the plaintiff Leonie Huffine, her son, the defendant George R. Lincoln, and two children of a deceased daughter; that in 1910 Alvin R. Lincoln married the defendant Anna D. Lincoln, and these two are now husband and wife; that in November, 1910, Alvin R. Lincoln repossessed himself of said will, and thereafter repudiated the same and his agreement with Mary E. Lincoln, declaring that Leonie Huffine should have nothing from him, and has threatened to dispose of the property conveyed to him by Mary E. Lincoln, in order to deprive and defraud Leonie of the same, or any portion thereof; that he has formally revoked said will and made another, which is now in force, bequeathing to Leonie a nominal sum, only for the purpose of preventing her from breaking the same; that George has made common cause with his father in resisting Leonie's complaint, and denying the agreement between Alvin R. Lincoln and Mary E. Lincoln as alleged therein. Upon these facts the court concluded as a matter of law that Alvin R. Lincoln became and is an involuntary trustee of the property conveyed to him by Mary E. Lincoln; that neither Anna D. Lincoln nor George R. Lincoln has any title, claim, or interest in the premises, that Leonie Huffine is entitled to a conveyance thereof from Alvin R. Lincoln, free of all claims through or under him, and that a decree should be entered directing such conveyance. This appeal challenges the correctness of the judgment entered in so far as it accords with said findings and conclusions.
The first contention is that the agreement between Mary E. Lincoln and Alvin R. Lincoln is not enforceable at all because of the subsequent marriage of the latter, and is not enforceable at the instance of the plaintiff because "she is not a third party for whose benefit the contract was made, within the provisions of the statute authorizing an action by a third party to a contract." If, as the argument and cases cited seem to indicate, it is meant by this to urge that the contract between Alvin R. Lincoln and Mary E. Lincoln cannot be specifically enforced by this plaintiff, the answer is that she does not ask, nor has the court adjudged, a specific performance. If, however, the contention is that the transaction is not cognizable by a court of equity at the suit of the plaintiff, then we say the defendants themselves have answered it by praying this court to reverse the judgment as entered and to direct a decree canceling the conveyance from Mary E. Lincoln to Alvin R. Lincoln, allowing the property to pass in accordance with the law of descent.
The real question at issue is this: Do the facts found warrant the declaration of a trust of the property in Alvin R Lincoln for the benefit of Leonie Huffine, and can such trust be now declared and enforced as against Anna D. Lincoln, George R. Lincoln, or the children of the deceased daughter? In moving towards the answer it is to be noted that arguments based upon the statutory restriction of a wife's power to devise her property to others than her husband (Rev. Codes, § 3735) are wholly irrelevant. The determination of Mary E. Lincoln was not to devise, but to convey, and her right to convey cannot be open to doubt. Rev. Codes, § 3700. What her reasons were for this determination we may not definitely know, but it is a pure gratuity to assert that such conveyance was intended as a testamentary disposition rather than a conveyance inter vivos for the very best of considerations. Suffice it to know that her settled design was to convey to the daughter, and had it been carried out, title to the property would have vested in the daughter free of all claims by or under her father, her brother, or any one else. That design was frustrated, as the court has found, by the influence and inducements of the father to his own advantage and, as it ultimately proved, to his daughter's disadvantage. These inducements were that if the mother would convey to him instead of to her daughter, he would make a will, devising all the mother's property and all his own real estate to the daughter and son in equal shares. He made the will, and she the conveyance. It is argued that, inasmuch as he made the will, and inasmuch as his later revocation of it was perfectly legal, if not actually commanded by his subsequent marriage, no trust can be said to exist, because there was no fraud. This is too narrow a view of the transaction. The thing contemplated was a will which should be and remain effective; only on the understanding that the daughter and son alike should come into all the property, would the mother forego her design to convey her property to the daughter. The transaction was between parties who stood in the highest of...
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