Reinheimer v. Rhedans

• Decision Date: 14 September 1959
• Docket Number: No. 47091,No. 2,47091,2
• Citation: 327 S.W.2d 823
• Parties: Charlotte E. REINHEIMER and Clarence Reinheimer, Appellants-Respondents, v. Amanda RHEDANS and Margaret L. Cleeland, Respondents-Appellants
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

Page 823

327 S.W.2d 823

Charlotte E. REINHEIMER and Clarence Reinheimer Appellants-Respondents, v. Amanda RHEDANS and Margaret L. Cleeland, Respondents-Appellants.

No. 47091.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 2.

Sept. 14, 1959.

Motion for Rehearing or to Transfer to Court en Banc Denied

Oct. 12, 1959.

Julius Berg, Clarence Neudeck, Francis R. Stout, St. Louis, for plaintiff Charlotte E. Reinheimer and third party plaintiff Clarence Reinheimer, appellants-respondents.

Donald S. Hilleary, St. Louis, for defendants Amanda Rhedans and Margaret Cleeland, appellants-respondents.

EAGER, Judge.

In one count of their second amended petition plaintiffs seek to set aside certain deeds as fraudulently induced and procured by defendant Rhedans, and in another they claim title by adverse possession and ask a declaration that defendants have no title. The property involved is a 30 foot vacant lot next to the home of plaintiffs in the City of St. Louis. The lot is described as 'Lot 71 of the resubdivision of Block No. 5 of South St. Louis Suburb, and in City Block No. 2730 of the City of St. Louis and in subdivision now known as Grand Avenue Heights; * * *' The house of plaintiffs is on Lot 70. Suit was originally filed on Aug. 30, 1956, by Charlotte Reinheimer; Clarence Reinheimer, her husband, was brought in as a necessary party on motion of defendants on April 12, 1957; thereafter he joined generally with the original plaintiff in her claims. In an amended counterclaim defendants claim title to the lot, pray an adjudication of the title, and also seek to hold Clarence Reinheimer liable upon his covenants of warranty for all judgments rendered against them. To digest the pleadings further would complicate this opinion unnecessarily. The issues will appear from the facts and from our discussion.

Clarence Reinheimer and defendant Amanda Rhedans are brother and sister; she was 76 years of age at trial time; his age is not shown. Defendant Cleeland is Amanda's daughter, and is joined here because title to the lot was later put in the joint names of the mother and daughter. The source of title was Frederick Reinheimer, the father of Clarence and Amanda. Under date of Dec. 10, 1938, he conveyed Lots 70 and 71 to Clarence as 'a single person'; this deed conveyed both the house and the controverted vacant lot next to it. Clarence had married in 1937 and there is much discussion, pro and con, as to whether the marriage had been kept secret. His wife Charlotte was a registered nurse and she continued to use her previous name, even to the time of trial; she testified that they told Clarence's father about the marriage within 'a week or so,' but there is little or no explanation of the fact that the father deeded the property as he did fourteen months later; she further testified that she was introduced to Mrs. Rhedans as Clarence's wife on April 30, 1942. The father died in 1940; under date of May 11, 1942, Clarence, designated as 'a single person,' purportedly executed and acknowledged a warranty deed to Lot 71 to his sister Amanda Rhedans as grantee. It is this deed, primarily, which is sought to be cancelled; the later ones are merely secondary. Plaintiff Charlotte testified that she first learned of the deed in July 1942, from a neighbor, but then 'looked it up.' Clarence testified: that he gave his father a note for $2,000 when the real estate was conveyed to him, and that he later paid this note to the estate; that the house was worth considerably more than that; that his sister had been asking him for a deed to the lot substantially ever since his father died, and told him that she had a paper or a note signed by their father stating that she should have the lot, but that she could not locate the paper. He further testified: that shortly before May 11, 1942, she told him that she had found the paper, so he proceeded to the office of a Mr. Panzier (who had been attorney for the father's estate and who was dead at trial time) to have him prepare a deed to the lot; that Mr. Panzier was out, so he got from the office girl a warranty deed form which he signed in blank, leaving word that Mr. Panzier should complete it and that he would pick it up shortly; that he, Clarence, did not deliver the deed to his sister, nor did he acknowledge it in person (the acknowledgment was affixed by Mr. Panzier as of the date of the deed); that he learned later that his sister had picked up the deed; that he received nothing from her for the deed, in money or property. The fraud charged, so far as Clarence is concerned, rests in the fact that his sister picked up the completed deed without showing him any note or paper from his father. He further testified: that during May 1942 he asked his sister, by phone, for a return of the deed, the remainder of the conversation not being shown; that about 1947 his niece (Cleeland) came to his home and asked if his wife would sign a quitclaim deed, which she presented; that he did not let her in the house but went in and asked his wife if she would sign it; his excuse for this action was that he knew that the wife would not sign it. Clarence admitted receiving a deed from Mrs. Rhedans to a lot in St. Louis County, discussed later, but testified that he paid her $675 in cash for that deed in Mr. Panzier's office when he received it in October 1941.

Amanda Rhedans testified: that her father wanted Clarence to have the house and wanted her to have the lot; that she did not ask the father for a deed before his death because he was sick; that after his death she often requested a deed from Clarence but he wanted 'pay' for the lot; that shortly before he went to an American Legion Convention in Boston in 1940, he gave to her at her house a signed paper stating that in case of his death the lot should be 'given to my sister Mrs. John Rhedans on instructions from my father * * *.' This paper was offered as an exhibit and a photostat is here; Mrs. Rhedans testified that she (somewhat irregularly) had it notarized in the absence of Clarence, but with his consent. The brother's testimony about this instrument was rather equivocal; he stated that he guessed that it was his signature, that he did not remember signing it, that he did not know and did not remember whether he had prepared it, that his father never told him to give her the lot although she always insisted that the father had so intended, and he finally said that he never saw the paper before. Amanda further testified: that her father left three lots in St. Louis County and each of the three children was to have one; that the executors (one of whom was Clarence) deeded all three lots to her and charged them against her interest in the estate, promising to buy two of them back from her; that she finally conveyed one of these lots to Clarence as consideration for his deed to the lot here in controversy; her deed to him was dated and acknowledged on Oct. 27, 1941, but was not recorded until July 15, 1942. (The deed in controversy from Clarence to her, dated May 11, 1942, was recorded on July 20, 1942.) She also testified: that the deed to Lot 71 (here in controversy) was delivered to her by Clarence, and that they exchanged deeds at that time in his yard because he would not let her in the house; that Clarence had given her a computation (which she produced at the trial), claiming that she owed him money for taxes and interest, but that she did not understand this; that she finally agreed to 'square it' by deeding him the lot in St. Louis County and getting his deed to Lot 71. Clarence, as stated, testified that he paid his sister $675 in cash for her lot. Amanda also testified that she did not know at the time of the exchange of deeds that Clarence was married, that she had seen Charlotte in the house about May 1st, but had not been introduced to her; that she had had little or nothing to do with Clarence after their father's death, and that a relative told her about 1947 that he was married; that she then sent her daughter to see if she could get a quitclaim deed from his wife. She further testified: that she never told Clarence that she had a 'paper' signed by her father, and that she never even attended a funeral at which Charlotte claimed to have talked with her about the lot; that she did not receive $675 or any other sum for the lot which she deeded to Clarence. Margaret Cleeland, Mrs. Rhedan's daughter, testified that about May 1942, Clarence introduced Charlotte as his 'housekeeper.'

Tax payments on the controverted lot were handled in a rather peculiar manner. Amanda Rhedans (or her daughter) paid the taxes for 1943-'44-'45 and '46 and produced receipts; she testified that after 1946 tax statements were refused for a time, they being told that the taxes had already been paid; that they also paid the taxes for 1953-'54-'55 and '56, and she produced the receipts. It seems that during the intervening years the plaintiffs had asked for statements and had paid the taxes; in fact, there seems to have been a sort of 'scramble' for the right to pay taxes. However, the taxes were sometimes paid practically at the end of the year; for 1947 they went delinquent, being paid with the 1948 taxes on Dec. 23, 1948. The tax question is not deemed controlling.

On the plaintiffs' claim of adverse possession, the petition alleges that both plaintiffs had been in continuous and hostile possession for more than ten years, under a claim of right. Photographs were offered, showing, among other things, a fence between the lot and the house next door, a board fence at the rear of the lot, a little hedge in front, and a few rose bushes on the lot; plaintiffs testified that they had trimmed and sprayed the trees on the lot, picked fruit, removed dead and broken trees, cut the grass, planted flowers, constructed and maintained fences, and that they had always cared for the lot. Plaintiffs had taken down, within a matter of hours, a 'For Sale' sign put up on...