Taylor v. Welch

• Citation: 609 So.2d 1225
• Decision Date: 26 August 1992
• Docket Number: No. 89-CA-0666,89-CA-0666
• Parties: John Lee TAYLOR v. Kathryn Taylor WELCH, Martha Taylor Travis and Robert G. Nelson.
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

Page 1225

609 So.2d 1225

John Lee TAYLOR v. Kathryn Taylor WELCH, Martha Taylor Travis and Robert G Nelson.

No. 89-CA-0666.

Supreme Court of Mississippi.

Aug. 26, 1992.

Rehearing Denied Dec. 3, 1992.

Clyde Ratcliff, McComb, for appellant.

H.B. Mayes McGehee, McGehee McGehee & Torrey, Meadville, Thomas F. Badon, Liberty, for appellee.

Before ROY NOBLE LEE, C.J., and PRATHER and SULLIVAN, JJ.

ROY NOBLE LEE, Chief Justice, for the Court:

Kathryn Taylor Welch, Martha Taylor Travis and Robert G. Nelson filed suit in the Chancery Court of Amite County, Mississippi, against John Lee Taylor, seeking the cancellation of certain deeds executed by James T. Taylor, father of John Lee Taylor, Welch and Travis, and grandfather of Robert G. Nelson, to John Lee Taylor and for the return of funds alleged to have been appropriated wrongly from his estate by John Lee Taylor. The lower court entered judgment for the complainants and John Lee Taylor has appealed to this Court. He assigns six errors committed by the lower court, however, we reform the contentions to present the following issues.

I. DID THE LOWER COURT ERR IN FINDING THAT THERE WAS A CONFIDENTIAL RELATIONSHIP EXISTING BETWEEN MR. TAYLOR AND HIS SON, JOHN LEE TAYLOR, ON AND PRIOR TO DECEMBER 23, 1980, AND, IF SO, WAS THE PRESUMPTION OF UNDUE INFLUENCE OVERCOME BY CLEAR AND CONVINCING EVIDENCE?

II. DID THE LOWER COURT ERR IN FINDING THAT THERE WAS A CONFIDENTIAL RELATIONSHIP EXISTING BETWEEN MR. TAYLOR AND JOHN LEE TAYLOR ON AND PRIOR TO JUNE 6, 1984, AND, IF SO, DID THE COURT ERR IN CONCLUDING THAT JOHN LEE TAYLOR AHD OVERCOME THE PRESUMPTION OF UNDUE INFLUENCE BY CLEAR AND CONVINCING EVIDENCE?

III. DID THE LOWER COURT ERR IN FINDING THAT THERE WAS NO DELIVERY OF CERTAIN DEEDS DATED JUNE 6, 1984, EXECUTED BY MR. TAYLOR?

FACTS

James Tate Taylor executed a will on December 29, 1971, which, in large part, serves as the basis for this suit. The will devised all of his property to his wife Cleo for life. The remainder, or the fee, if she predeceased him, was to be divided equally among four devisees: his son, John Lee, his two daughters, Katherine Evonne Welch and Martha Taylor Travis, and his grandson Robert G. Nelson. John Lee Taylor was to get a twenty acre home site where he already lived as part of his one-fourth. The will was duly executed and witnessed.

Mr. Taylor was born on June 20, 1894, and died on July 27, 1984. His first wife was Eunice Lee Robinson Taylor, who bore him three children. Kathryn Yvonne Taylor Welch was born on July 10, 1918. Martha Tate Taylor Travis was the next born, and John Lee Taylor was born on December 15, 1922. His first wife died in 1937 and he married Cleo Leggett Taylor in 1938. Their only child was stillborn.

During his lifetime, Mr. Taylor accumulated a considerable amount of property. His mother deeded him a life estate in 265 acres of land in 1934, with the remainder to his children. On this parcel of property, Mr. Taylor built his home. Later on, he acquired 678 more acres of land from his mother in fee simple. Apparently, Mr. Taylor was also a successful businessman in the Gillsburg community of Amite County, at times running a cotton gin and a sawmill.

Two of Mr. Taylor's children left the family farm when they grew up. Martha married and moved away from the farm, but returned when she and her husband divorced and when her only son, Robert G. Nelson, was about two years old. Coincidentally, this was about the same time when Mr. Taylor and his second wife had the stillborn child. As a consequence, Mr. Taylor and Cleo developed a very close relationship with this grandson. When Martha remarried and moved with her new husband to a farm about six miles away, her son (Bobby), began to live mainly with Mr. Taylor and Cleo. Martha's husband, Norman Reed Travis, owned a 150 acre farm near Mr. Taylor's. Martha testified that she had a good relationship with her father, but that he never gave her loans or bought things for her. Neither she nor her husband did things around her father's farm to help him. When Cleo died, Martha and Mr. Taylor had a disagreement about a ring that Cleo had owned, but Martha stated that they had parted on good terms.

Kathryn Yvonne Taylor Welch lived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She too thought her relationship with her father was good, in spite of the distance separating them. When Mr. Taylor was diagnosed with cancer in 1984, he began taking cobalt treatments in Baton Rouge. He was driven by one of the other family members and spent the weekdays with Kathryn and her husband, who would take him each day for the treatments.

John Lee Taylor, the appellant, was Mr. Taylor's only son. He lived on the family farm for almost his entire life, leaving only for a couple of years in college, about three years in the service during World War II, and about four months for a job in Baton Rouge. When he returned from the job in Baton Rouge, he began helping his father around the farm and finally began to farm his father's land on his own in 1949. He operated under at least two written leases on the 323 acres of his father's property, but never paid anything but nominal cash consideration. However, he stated that he always helped his father by doing chores around the farm and helping at the cotton gin and sawmill. John Lee built a house on his father's land in 1958, although Mr. Taylor did not give him a deed to the land until 1974. In addition to his farming operations, John Lee had a job at the Amite County Co-Op from 1959-1965 and at Production Credit Association from 1965-1985.

Robert Nelson (Bobby), as already mentioned, was Martha Tate Taylor Travis' son and the grandson who was practically reared by Mr. Taylor and Cleo. He called Mr. Taylor "Daddy" before he went off to college and after that began calling him "Papa." He and almost every other family member testified that he was like a son to Shortly after Cleo's death, the events leading up to this lawsuit began to occur. Mr. Taylor had John Lee's name placed on his checking account at the Southwest Mississippi Bank on July 10, 1974. The signature card read "J.T. Taylor or John L. Taylor." John Lee testified that he did not know why his father wanted his name on the account and that his father just asked him to go by the bank and sign the signature card, which he did. John Lee testified that he never wrote a check on the account and that he did not even have any checks to write. Records from the same bank show that a safe deposit box was rented on October 4, 1974, for "J.T. Taylor or Bobby G. Nelson or John L. Taylor." John Lee testified again that he did not know about this arrangement when his father rented the box, but that his father later asked him to go by and sign the signature card, which he did.

Mr. Taylor and Cleo. Mr. Taylor paid practically all of Bobby's expenses at Mississippi College that were not covered by an athletic scholarship. Mr. Taylor's wife, Cleo, left all of her property to Bobby and his sister Betty. Bobby testified that Mr. Taylor was not upset by that fact, but was upset by Cleo's death to the extent of writing a song about it. In 1975, Mr. Taylor tried to give Bobby a deed to 90 acres of his land but Bobby would not accept it, telling Mr. Taylor that he could leave it to him when he died, if he wanted to. Although Bobby lived in various places other than the family farm after he graduated from college, he testified that he tried to visit and call as often as he could, particularly after Cleo died in 1974.

Mr. Taylor opened a golden savings account at the Southwest Mississippi Bank on November 6, 1975, again in his own and John Lee's names. John Lee stated that he knew nothing of the account until his father asked him to go in and sign the signature card and that he did not know why his father put the account in his name also. Martha testified that she saw John Lee's name on one of the accounts and asked her father why the account was set up that way. His answer was that the account was in case he got sick or something. Mr. Taylor also opened a silver savings account in his and Bobby's names; John Lee testified that he did not know about that account until after his father died.

A number of financial transactions between Mr. Taylor and John Lee were shown in the years between 1980 and 1984. Most were characterized by John Lee as loans from Mr. Taylor to him and repayments of loans by him, and this could not be disproved at trial. Nor could it be proven that John Lee profited on these transactions, other than receiving interest free loans. Some of them were explained by John Lee as repayments from his father of bills he had paid.

In 1980, an oil company began negotiating with Mr. Taylor for a lease on his property. John Lee attended some meetings with his father concerning leasing the property. An offer was made to Mr. Taylor for a mineral lease on his land. However, since he only had a life estate on some of the land, the children's signatures were needed in order to lease all of the property. Two or three meetings were held between the members of the family. Mr. Taylor wanted everyone to sign the lease, which offered a one-eighth royalty and a $50 per acre bonus payment. John Lee also wanted everyone to sign the lease. However, Kathryn contacted an oil and gas lawyer in Jackson who advised her that the terms of the lease were not good for that area of the State. Martha agreed that the terms were not good enough and the two of them refused to sign the lease.

Subsequently, according to John Lee, his father instructed him to have a deed prepared transferring all of his mineral interests to John Lee. None of the other family members knew of this until much later. According to John Lee, he went to attorney Floyd Wayne Stratton's office, where he relayed his father's instructions to Stratton's associate, D. Reginald Jones. His father was not present. Jones prepared the mineral deed conveying all of Mr. Taylor's ...