Schaffner v. Schilling

• Decision Date: 14 May 1878
• Citation: 6 Mo.App. 42
• Parties: BARBARA SCHAFFNER ET AL., Appellants, v. BERNARD SCHILLING ET AL., Respondents.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

6 Mo.App. 42

BARBARA SCHAFFNER ET AL., Appellants,

v.BERNARD SCHILLING ET AL., Respondents.

St. Louis Court of Appeals, Missouri.

May 14, 1878.

1. A court of equity will not relieve against mistakes of law, when to do so would be to violate a settled rule of public policy.

2. Where gross ignorance is one circumstance from which undue influence, or imbecility, may be inferred, it may in that way tend to furnish ground for relief; otherwise equity does not relieve against ignorance of the law which is wilful or the result of gross negligence.

3. Where a widow, having a dower interest in the estate of her deceased husband, invested money in erecting a valuable improvement upon real estate of which her husband died seized, but which then belonged to her children, minors of tender years, the fact that this was done in ignorance of the law, and under the impression that the real estate of her deceased husband belonged by law to her, will not warrant a court of equity, in a direct proceeding for that purpose, in decreeing the title to the mother on payment by her to the children of the naked value of the ground, or in ordering a sale of the property and the repayment to the mother, out of the proceeds, of the value of the improvements.

APPEAL from St. Louis Circuit Court.

Affirmed.

FINKELNBURG & RASSIEUR, for appellants: Equity will relieve parties from the consequences of a mistake of law as well as of fact, where the mistake is such a gross mistake of a plain principle of law as to involve great mental imbecility or credulous confidence in the opinion of others, or where the circumstances of the case would tend to deprive one party of his property and confer the same upon another without any consideration.--Story's Eq. Pl., sects. 116-138, and see particularly sects. 138 c,i 138 if, last edition; Adam's Eq., marg. p. 190; Bispham's Eq., sect. 187; Broom's Leg. Max., marg. p. 266; Kerr on Fraud, 398; Lansdowne v. Lansdowne, 2 Jac. & W. 205; Bingham v. Bingham, 1 Ves. 126; Wyche v. Green, 16 Ga. 49; Collier v. Perkerson, 31 Ga. 121; Jones v. Monroe, 32 Ga. 181; Evants v. Strode, 11 Ohio, 480; McNaughten v. Partridge, 11 Ohio, 223; Champlin v. Laytin, 1 Edw. Ch. 467; Hunt v. Rousmaniere, 8 Wheat. 174; Harney v. Charles, 45 Mo. 157. The value of improvements made in good faith under a mistake of title have been allowed in partition, and by analogy may be allowed in the case at bar.-- Conklin v. Conklin, 3 Sandf. Ch. 64; St. Felix v. Rankin, 3 Edw. Ch. 323.D'ARCY & NAGEL, for respondents: It is not sufficient, in order to create an equity for rectification, that there has been a mistake as to the legal construction or legal consequences of an instrument; there must be a mistake of fact.--Kerr on Fraud, 428; McMurray v. St. Louis Oil Co., 33 Mo. 385; Speck v. Ruffin, 40 Mo. 405; Lee v. Burman, 55 Mo. 403; Cassidy v. Irons, 1 Mo. App. 595.

BAKEWELL, J., delivered the opinion of the court.

In this case there was final judgment for defendants on demurrer, and plaintiffs appeal. The facts admitted by the demurrer are as follows: Plaintiffs are husband and wife. Plaintiff Barbara, at the date of her marriage to her present husband, was the widow of John Schilling, who died in 1875 leaving two children by her, aged, at the date of this action, fourteen and seven respectively. These children are the defendants. After her husband's death, Barbara received from insurance policies which her husband had during his life taken out for her benefit the sum of $4,700. John Schilling left a valuable estate, consisting of real and personal property, and no debts. The value of the estate is not set out in the petition. The plaintiff Barbara was afraid to deposit her money in bank; and being ignorant of law, and following the advice of neighbors equally ignorant with herself, she constructed two brick buildings upon a portion of the real estate of which her husband died seized, being a fifty-two foot lot in St. Louis. She thus expended $4,486.45 of her private means derived from the insurance policies spoken of above, supposing, in her ignorance of the law of descents, that the property was her own, and that this was safe and the best investment she could make. Defendants have the fee-simple title to the lot on which these buildings are erected, subject to the rights of their mother as widow. What those rights are, the petition does not state. She may have elected to take one-third in fee, under the provisions of the statute; but that is not stated, and it will be taken that she did not. The prayer is that the court appoint some competent person to take an account of the money expended by the mother upon this real estate, and also of the present value of the improvements, as also of the ground; and that upon his report being made, the court will either order a sale of the premises and a division of the proceeds, so that the mother shall receive first a proportionate amount equal to the proportionate amount that the appraised value of the improvements bears to the value of the lot, the balance to be divided according to the interests of the parties in the real estate, or that the title be decreed to Barbara, on payment to defendants by her of their interest in the appraised value of the naked ground.

We have no doubt whatever that this demurrer was properly sustained, and that the court had no power to grant the relief prayed for. It would be very destructive to the rights of minor children to hold that one having an undivided interest in a life-estate, or a claim for dower in their real estate, might erect such improvements as he or she might choose upon their land, and then at pleasure, and perhaps choosing a moment of great depression in unimproved property, take the ground from the children at the appraised value of the naked land. Ignorance of the law might in any case be set up, and if alleged it might be impossible to disprove it. It is not necessary, for the purposes of this case, to determine that the maxim that ignorance of the law excuses no one is of such inflexible application that a case may not be supposed (especially when the element of fraudulent imposition upon ignorance enters into the transaction) in which equity might relieve against the evil consequences of a mistake which was not purely one of fact. But we are referred to no case, and we are satisfied that no well-considered case can be found, in which one building upon the property of minors in which he has an interest has been permitted to compel the minors either to purchase the improvements or to sell him the land, on the ground that the person erecting the improvements was ignorant of the law and did not intend that the improvements should belong to the owners of the...