Robinson's Adm'r v. Alexander

• Decision Date: 18 April 1922
• Citation: 239 S.W. 786,194 Ky. 494
• Parties: ROBINSON'S ADM'R ET AL. v. ALEXANDER ET AL.
• Court: Kentucky Court of Appeals

239 S.W. 786

194 Ky. 494

ROBINSON'S ADM'R ET AL. v. ALEXANDER ET AL.

Court of Appeals of Kentucky.

April 18, 1922

Appeal from Circuit Court, Breckinridge County.

Action by Mrs. Lee Robinson's administrator and others against Huston Alexander and another. From judgment for defendants plaintiffs appeal. Affirmed.

Claude Mercer, of Hardinsburg, for appellants.

Ernest Woodward, of Louisville, and Moorman & Walls, of Hardinsburg for appellees.

TURNER C.

Some years prior to 1900 George M. Pile and his wife, Missouri Pile, were the joint owners of certain tracts of land in Breckinridge county; Missouri Pile owning a three-fourths undivided interest therein and George M. Pile a one-fourth undivided interest. George M. Pile, as we gather from a deed thereafter made by him in 1907, also owned the full title to certain other tracts of land.

Missouri Pile, the wife, died and her heirs inherited from her the three-fourths undivided interest the title to which was in her, and thereafter they and George M. Pile were the joint owners thereof as Pile and his wife had previously been, and in the same proportion.

Prior to April 1900, George M. Pile married a second time, and in that month he executed a will, which was after his death in 1908 probated. In that instrument, after providing for his second wife according to the terms of a marriage contract made between them, he devised to his daughter Lora Alexander certain specified tracts of land, to his daughter Lee Alexander certain other specified tracts of land, and to his two grandsons Irvie and Carlie Alexander, certain other tracts of land. It appears that the several tracts of land therein devised to the two daughters Lora and Lee were the lands in which their mother, Missouri Pile, had a three-fourths undivided interest which they and her other heirs at law had inherited from her, although there is no reference in the will to this fact, and the testator apparently undertakes to dispose of this property as if he were the owner of the full title therein.

At the time this will was executed one of his daughters was a widow with two infant children, and there is no reference in the will to any supposed difference in value between the lands devised to the two daughters; but thereafter, and before November, 1907, this widowed daughter remarried, and thereafter there was considerable discussion in the family circles to the effect that the widowed daughter had been given in the will, with which the parties were all familiar the best of the division, and that after her remarriage there was no longer any reason for this, which up to that time had been acquiesced in because of her widowhood. This discussion eventuated in a sort of family settlement in November, 1907 during the lifetime of George M. Pile, and at which he was present, and that settlement was brought about in this way George M. Pile on the 18th of November, 1907, executed to his two daughters and his two grandsons a deed whereby he and his then wife conveyed to each of them the same tracts of land which he had previously, in his will of 1900, devised to them, specifically conveying to the two daughters his one-fourth undivided interest in the several tracts of lands devised to them in his will, and conveying to his two grandsons the same tracts of land devised to them in his will, and in this deed there was no reference to any supposed difference in value between the interests conveyed to his two daughters. This conveyance by the father placed the full title in the two sisters and two grandsons to the tracts of land theretofore owned jointly by them with him, and then, on the 20th day of November, 1907, the two daughters and the two grandsons joined in a deed of partition as between themselves to the several tracts of land, thereby conveying to each other the same tracts of land devised to each in the will of the father dated in 1900, and in the deed of the father and his wife dated on the 18th of November, 1907; and, while in this partition deed there is no reference to the difference in the value between the several tracts of land conveyed therein to the two sisters, simultaneously with the execution thereof one sister, then Mrs. Robinson, who had been a widow at the date of her father's will in 1900, but who had since remarried, executed to her sister, Lora...