Stevens v. Burgess

• Decision Date: 16 May 1933
• Docket Number: No. 87.,87.
• Citation: 263 Mich. 98,248 N.W. 560
• Parties: STEVENS et al. v. BURGESS et al.
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court

263 Mich. 98

248 N.W. 560

STEVENS et al.

v.BURGESS et al.

No. 87.

Supreme Court of Michigan.

May 16, 1933.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Jackson County, in Chancery; John Simpson, Judge.

Suit by Benjamin A. Stevens and another against Clare G. Stevens, individually and as administrator of the estates of Benjamin P. Burgess, deceased, and of Louisa Burgess, deceased, and another. From a decree dismissing the suit, plaintiffs and Clare G. Stevens, individually and as administrator of the estate of Benjamin P. Burgess, deceased, and of Louisa Burgess, deceased, appeal.

Affirmed.

Argued before the Entire Bench.

Richard Price, of Jackson, for appellants.

Adrian F. Cooper, of Albion, for appellee.

BUTZEL, Justice.

Benjamin Burgess owned several parcels of land in Jackson county, including a farm on which he and his wife, Louisa, resided. He executed and delivered deeds to separate parcels of land to his two daughters and to one of his sons, Fay B. Burgess, as each married and left home. On the same day that Fay received his deed, Benjamin Burgess caused another deed to be drafted for the farm on which he lived to his other son, William, as grantee. William was a single man who resided with his parents on the farm. He had suffered from heart disease ever since he was five years of age, and on that account was unable to perform any heavy manual labor. The deed to William was never recorded, and appellees contended that it never was delivered to him. The trial judge so found. The deed, dated November 1, 1898, was drafted by Ben A. Joy, a justice of the peace, who both witnessed it and took the acknowledgments. Almeda Burgess, one of the defendants, married Fay B. Burgess on December 14, 1898. She testified that shortly after her marriage, while visiting the Burgess home, she opened a drawer of the bureau in which Burgess kept his private papers; that she saw two envelopes, one indorsed ‘deed for. Louisa Burgess,’ and the other ‘deed for William H. Burgess, at our death,’ or words to that effect.

William died in 1903 and Louisa in April, 1918. Testimony was introduced to the effect that, late in the summer of 1918, Benjamin Burgess gave his son Fay a deed in a sealed envelope and said: ‘Here, Fay, this is for you when I am gone. Take it to the bank, put it in your lock box, and after I am gone, you take it to Ray Hoag or Charley Comstock and have them put it on record’; that he further said that he did not dare leave it at home because other members of the family were meddling with his papers. Upon the death of Benjamin Burgess, Fay took the envelope from his lock box, and delivered it to Mr. Comstock, who, after attending to its recording, returned it to Fay.

The following year, Benjamin A. Stevens and wife, plaintiffs, purchased the property described in the deed from Fay. They paid $1,100 as a down payment and gave a purchase-money mortgage for $5,400, on the principal of which there remains an unpaid balance of $3,300. In 1931, plaintiffs were negotiating a sale of their equity in the property, and, to avoid the expense fo an abstract, Fay was asked to loan his deed for inspection by the prospective purchaser. It was then discovered by plaintiffs that there had been an erasure of an earlier grantee's name, both in the body of the deed and also on the outside thereof, and that the name of Fay B. Burgess had been inserted in ink in both places. It is conceded by all parties that the deed was the original one made out to William Burgess. Appellees, however, contended that it never was delivered to William; that, after the death of William, his name had been erased and the name of Fay B. Burgess written in as grantee by Ben A. Joy, the justice of the peace who had made out the deed in the first instance, all under the direction of Benjamin Burgess. Fay B. Burgess, when asked to explain the transaction, was evasive in his replies and he committed suicide shortly after the validity of the deed was first questioned. Benjamin Stevens and wife, as plaintiffs, thereupon brought the present suit against Clare G. Stevens, individually and as administrator of the estates of Benjamin P. Burgess and Louisa Burgess, and also against Almeda M. Burgess, individually and as administratrix of the estate of Fay B. Burgess. Plaintiffs asked an accounting and sought to have the mortgage and deed set aside, as well as other relief.

Testimony was offered by appellants to show that the...