Messer v. Helfer

• Decision Date: 03 June 1919
• Docket Number: No. 19753.,19753.
• Parties: MESSER v. HELFER et al.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

212 S.W. 896

278 Mo. 416

MESSER v. HELFER et al.

No. 19753.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 2.

June 3, 1919.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Ray County; Frank P. Divelbiss, Judge.

Suit by Melissa E. Messer, by William F. Yates, her guardian, against Alice Helfer and others. From judgment for defendants, plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.

Lavelock & Kirkpatrick, of Richmond, and Martin E. Lawson, of Liberty, for appellant.

M. J. Henderson, Garner, Clark & Garver, John C. Jacobs, and George W. Crowley, all of Richmond, for respondents.

MOZLEY, C.

The plaintiff, Melissa Messer (formerly Melissa Stack), brings this action by William F. Yates, her guardian, and it has for its purpose the setting aside of a certain deed of trust executed by the plaintiff on the 25th day of February, 1895, in which one Steven Messer was made trustee, to secure to one E. M. Endsley a note for $500, which sum he, on said date, loaned to the plaintiff. Said deed of trust covered the east half of the northeast quarter of section 11, township 51, range 29, in Ray county, Mo., except a tract theretofore conveyed to one Brasher off the east and south sides thereof for a private road.

The petition is in two counts, the first in equity and the second in ejectment. The first count bases plaintiff's right to have said deed of trust set aside on the ground that she was without mental capacity to make it at the time it was executed, that is, on said 25th day of February, 1895, and further seeks to set aside the deed to the purchaser under the foreclosure sale under said deed of trust and all mesne conveyances from said foreclosure sale of said land down to defendant Everett Endsley, and that they be declared a cloud upon plaintiff's title, canceled and for naught held, and that the title thereto be decreed in the plaintiff. The second count merely seeks to recover the possession of said land.

On the 17th day of August, 1891, the plaintiff, Melissa Messer (at that time Melissa Stack), by warranty deed from William Vance and wife became the owner in fee of the land above described, and, as above stated, executed said deed of trust thereon on said 25th day of February, 1895. On the 27th day of February, 1895, just two days after said deed of trust was executed, plaintiff and Steven Messer, the trustee therein, intermarried. On the 24th day of June, 1895, plaintiff was adjudged by the probate court of Ray county to be of unsound mind and incapable of managing her own business, and a guardian was appointed for her. This proceeding was had 3 months and 29 days subsequent to the execution of said deed of trust. On the 3d day of April, 1897, default having been made in the payment of the debt and interest in said deed described, and the trustee therein, the husband of plaintiff, having refused to act, the then acting sheriff of Ray county, at the request of the legal holder of said note, foreclosed said deed of trust in due and legal form, and the holder and owner of said note, E. M. Endsley, became the purchaser of said land for the price and sum of $600, and, as above stated, the title thus acquired, by subsequent conveyances, vested in Everett Endsley for a valuable consideration.

There is no controversy in the pleadings, or otherwise, between plaintiff and defendant except as to the mental capacity of the plaintiff to make said deed of trust on the date it was made, the plaintiff by her guardian asserting that she was mentally incapacitated to make it and the defendant that she was not, and further contending that the proof brought in support of the affirmative of the proposition, if true, was wholly insufficient to establish mental incapacity on her part to make said deed of trust on the date that it was made. This proposition was the crux of the case in the court below, and, as will readily be seen, it is solely a question of fact. All testimony tending to prove the sanity of plaintiff after she had been adjudged insane by the probate court on the 24th day of June, 1895, was by the court excluded from consideration. Many witnesses were examined, and the learned chancellor, after seeing the witnesses and hearing all of the competent testimony that was offered, resolved this question of fact in favor of defendant, evidently taking the view that there was no testimony establishing mental incapacity of plaintiff to make said deed of trust on the 25th day of February, 1895, and decreed that plaintiff was of sound mind at that time, and also that defendant Everett Endsley was the owner of said land, and that his codefendants had no interest therein.

Motions for new trial and in arrest of judgment were filed and overruled by the court, and the plaintiff comes here as appellant. In this court learned counsel for appellant have limited the issue presented for our determination to a single question of fact; that is, was the plaintiff mentally incapacitated to make said deed of trust on the 25th day of February, 1895? We quote from appellant's reply brief as follows:

"The appellant does not question the law cited by respondent, but says that no one can carefully read the evidence in this case and come to any other conclusion than that Melissa Messer, at the making of the deed of trust in question, and for a long time before, was wholly incapable of understanding the deed of trust, and ever since then has remained in that condition."

The issue thus presented necessitates an examination of the facts relied upon by appellant to establish mental incapacity and the facts offered by defendant tending to prove mental capacity. Many witnesses testified, but we shall not do more than to set out the substance of their testimony. On the part of the plaintiff it shows: (a) That she was the mother of seven or eight children, and that she did not dress them or herself in accordance with the idea entertained by some of the witnesses, although the record abounds with undisputed evidence of her squalid poverty. We pass this feature of the testimony with the remark that, in our judgment, it would be a dangerous attempt for a court to undertake to establish as a precedent that childbearing and poverty, either singly or combined, constituted evidence of insanity. (b) Further it was testified that she hesitated about, and finally declined, to rent her farm, on which the deed of trust in question had been placed, to one of the witnesses. If this incident has any probative value whatever, it manifestly would be in favor of plaintiff's sanity. It discloses that she knew he was trying to rent her farm, and that she declined to contract with him. She may have had many reasons for declining to rent to this witness which were entirely satisfactory to her. We think her conduct in this transaction...