Parramore v. Parramore

• Decision Date: 07 December 1978
• Docket Number: No. II-11,II-11
• Citation: 371 So.2d 123
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals
• Parties: Alney PARRAMORE, Appellant, v. Eudell PARRAMORE, Juanita Parramore, Bernice Mae Gomez, Iris P. Mullen, and the Quincy State Bank, Appellees.

Page 123

371 So.2d 123

Alney PARRAMORE, Appellant, v. Eudell PARRAMORE, Juanita Parramore, Bernice Mae Gomez, Iris P. Mullen, and the Quincy State Bank, Appellees.

No. II-11.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.

Dec. 7, 1978.

Guyte P. McCord, III of Spector & Tunnicliff, Tallahassee, for appellant.

W. J. Oven, Jr., Tallahassee, and Alton M. Towles of Gregory & Towles, Quincy, for appellees.

SMITH, Acting Chief Judge.

Appellant Alney Parramore and his brother and sisters, appellees Eudell, Bernice, and Iris, are the four surviving children of Fred Parramore of Gadsden County, who died there in November 1974. Fred Parramore's estate was almost entirely in Gadsden County lands, and his plan was to parcel and convey those lands to his children at his death. He implemented that plan by inter vivos deeds purporting to convey life estates to himself and his wife with remainder interests to his children. In May 1963, the deeds were executed and acknowledged, but not delivered to the grantees. Fred placed the deeds with his will in a safe deposit box of a Quincy bank and instructed his children to pick up their deeds at his death. Fred survived his wife, later delivered Alney's deed to him, and, six months before his death, made another conveyance to Alney, the apparent effect of which was to release Fred's life estate and merge the fee in Alney. But Fred's deeds conveying remainder interests to appellees Eudell, Bernice and Iris were never handed over to them during Fred's lifetime.

Appellant Alney, whose parcel is securely vested in him, urges that the inter vivos deeds of remainder interests to his brother and sisters failed for want of delivery, and that the affected lands pass to all four children equally by the residuary clause of Fred's will. After a trial in which the decedent's later years were explored for evidence of his intent, the circuit court held that Fred Parramore's words and acts accomplished a symbolic and constructive delivery of the deeds during his lifetime, and that the remainder estates were vested in Eudell, Bernice, and Iris before their father's death. Alney appeals. We affirm.

Delivery is "the life of a deed"; without it no deed is good, though "the intent to deliver is clear and failure to deliver due to accident." Lance v. Smith, 123 Fla. 461, 468, 167 So. 366, 369 (1936). Yet delivery is not an exact ceremony, to be done invariably in a particular way. The clearest delivery is by "a manual tradition of the prepared deed with accompanying words or circumstances showing an appropriate intent." 1 R. Boyer, Florida Real Estate Transactions, Section 9.01 at 136 (1977). But a grantor may fully relinquish a deed, signifying a conveyance, otherwise than by placing it in the grantee's hands. The grantor may hand his deed to a person not the grantee, with directions to deliver it; and, if an intent to relinquish the deed is shown, and the grantor's directions eventually are carried out, delivery is regarded as having been accomplished even though it cannot be proved absolutely that the grantor could never have retrieved the deed. Fleming v. Fleming, 352 So.2d 895 (Fla.1st DCA 1977); see also Williams v. Williams, 149 Fla. 454, 6 So.2d 275 (1942); Pratt v. Carns, 80 Fla. 243, 85 So. 681 (1920); Videon v. Cowart, 241 So.2d 434 (Fla.1st DCA 1970), Cert. denied, 245 So.2d 88 (Fla.1971); Brown v. Hutch, 156 So.2d 683 (Fla.2d DCA 1963), Cert. denied, 162 So.2d 665 (Fla.1964).

As is stated in Smith v. Owens, 91 Fla. 995, 1001-02, 108 So. 891, 893 (1926), the critical issue respecting delivery is whether the grantor's intent and action released or reserved the locus poenitentiae, the opportunity to change his mind:

Actual manual delivery and change of possession are not always required in order to constitute an effectual delivery. The intention of the grantor is the determining factor. . . . In the well-considered case of Gulf Red Cedar Co. v. Crenshaw, 169 Ala. 606, 53 So. 812, the following propositions are announced: No formality or particular words or acts are essential to the delivery of a deed; delivery being a...