Teel v. Dunnihoo

• Decision Date: 10 December 1907
• Citation: 82 N.E. 844,230 Ill. 476
• Parties: TEEL et al. v. DUNNIHOO et al.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

230 Ill. 476

82 N.E. 844

TEEL et al.

v.DUNNIHOO et al.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Oct. 23, 1907.

Rehearing Denied Dec. 10, 1907.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Williamson County; A. W. Lewis, Judge.

Suit by Harry C. Teel and others against Wilmoth Dunnihoo and others. From a decree in favor of defendants, plaintiffs appeal. Affirmed.

F. W. Raymond and Arthur W. Underwood, for appellants.

James A. Martin, William W. Clemens, and William H. Warder, for appellees.

This was a bill in chancery filed by appellants. Harry C. Teel and Nona Teel (formerly Nona Stocks) and Elmo Stocks, by his guardian, John Stocks, against the appellees, to partition certain farm lands situated in Williamson county between Nona Teel and Elmo Stocks, who were alleged to be the owners in fee simple thereof, and to impeach and set aside as a cloud upon the title of said Nona Teel and Elmo Stocks a certain decree entered by the circuit court of Williamson county on April 17, 1891, in a suit in chancery then pending in said circuit court, wherein Mary E. A. Stocks and John Stocks, the father and mother of Nona Teel, and Elmo Stocks, were complainants, and wherein William L. Henderson and Harriet Henderson (the father and mother of Mary E. A. Stocks) and Nona Stocks were defendants, for fraud and for errors of law appearing upon the face of the record in said chancery suit, and to set aside and cancel as clouds upon the title of Nona Teel and Elmo Stocks a master's deed made to Mary E. A. Stocks in pursuance of the terms of said decree; also, to set aside and cancel certain deeds made by Mary E. A. Stocks and her grantees to said lands, through which the parties now in possession of said lands claim title. The court sustained a demurrer to said bill and dismissed the same for want of equity, and an appeal was prosecuted to this court, where the decree of the circuit court was reversed, and the cause was remanded to the circuit court, with directions to overrule the demurrer. Teel v. Dunnihoo, 221 Ill. 471, 77 N. E. 906,112 Am. St. Rep. 192.

It appears from the averments of the bill filed in this case: That Mary E. A. Stocks was a daughter of William L. and Harriet Henderson; that on the 17th day of August, 1886, William L. and Harriet Henderson conveyed to Mary E. A. Stocks and ‘her bodily heirs' the land in question for $1,000; that Mary E. A. Stocks and her husband, John Stocks, immediately moved upon the lands and improved the same and made their home thereon for a number of years; that on February 18, 1891, Mary E. A. Stocks and her husband, and after the birth of their child Nona, and when she was of the age of three years, filed a bill in chancery in the circuit court of Williamson county against Nona Stocks, William L. Henderson, and Harriet Henderson for the purpose of having corrected said deed by striking out therefrom the words ‘her bodily heirs'; that upon the hearing upon said bill the court found that William L. and Harriet Henderson by deed conveyed to said Mary E. A. Stocks and ‘her bodily heirs,’ on the 17th day of August, 1886, the lands described in the bill, and that the words ‘her bodily heirs' were improperly inserted in said deed, and that Mary E. A. Stocks was entitled to have said deed corrected by eliminating therefrom the words ‘her bodily heirs,’ and decreed that William L. Henderson, and Harriet, his wife, execute a good and sufficient warranty deed conveying to Mary E. A. Stocks said lands in fee simple, without any qualification or restriction whatever, within 60 days, and that in default of the execution and delivery of said deed the master in chancery of said court execute a deed of conveyance conveying to Mary E. A. Stocks in fee simple said lands; that William L. and Harriet Henderson having failed to make a deed as provided by said decree, the master in chancery executed a deed to Mary E. A. Stocks in accordance with the terms of said decree; that Mary E. A. Stocks subsequently sold and conveyed said lands by absolute deed, and the lands have been transferred, from time to time, by her grantee and his grantees, and are now owned and in the possession of persons who were not parties to said chancery suit commenced by Mary E. A. Stocks and husband against Nona Stocks and William L. and Harriet Henderson; that Mary E. A. Stocks died on October 21, 1902, leaving her surviving her husband, John Stocks, and Nona Teel, born March 21, 1887, and Elmo Stocks, born August 22, 1891, as her children and sole heirs at law; and that said Nona was about 18 years of age and Elmo about 14 years of age at the time this bill was filed.

The contentions made on the former appeal were. First, that in the case of Stocks et al. v. Stocks et al. the court did not have jurisdiction of the persons of Nona Teel and William L. Henderson and Harriet Henderson; second, that the guardian ad litem appointed for Nona Teel neglected and failed to properly represent and protect the rights of Nona Teel; third, that the testimony of John Stocks, Mary E. A. Stocks, and William L. Henderson, upon which the findings in the decree were based, that the words ‘her bodily heirs,’ found in the deed from William L. Henderson and Harriet Henderson to Mary E. A. Stocks, were improperly inserted in said deed, was false; and, fourth, that the deed from William L. and Harriet Henderson to Mary E. A. Stocks conveyed to Mary E. A. Stocks a life estate in said lands only, and that the fee-simple estate therein vested in Nona Teel and Elmo Stocks, and that the decree entered by the court in said chancery case, and the deed of the master in chancery based thereon, did not have the effect to divest said Nona Teel and Elmo Stocks, at the time of filing the bill herein, of their title in and to said lands, and that the title to said lands was in Nona Teel and Elmo Stocks at the time of filing the bill herein in fee simple. And it was held in the opinion then filed that the court, in the suit of Stocks et al. v. Stocks et al., had jurisdiction of the parties and of the subject-matter of that suit, and that the fact that error may have afterwards intervened on the hearing or in the entry of the decree would not have the effect to defeat the title of parties who dealt in good faith with the property, relying upon said decree; but, as it appeared that the title to said premises passed out of William L. Henderson and Harrriet Henderson and vested in said Mary E. A. Stocks for life and in Nona Teel and Elmo Stocks in fee, there was no title remaining in William L. and Harriet Henderson which they could convey, and that by a conveyance voluntarily made, or by one made under the direction of the court, they could not divest Nona Teel and Elmo Stocks of their fee-simple title in and to said premises and invest the same in Mary E. A. Stocks, and that the master's deed had no greater effect than would a deed from William L. and Harriet Henderson, and that the fee-simple title to said premises was in Nona Teel and Elmo Stocks.

Upon the case being reinstated in the circuit court the demurrer was overruled, whereupon the appellees answered said bill and filed cross-bills, in which they prayed, as was prayed in the bill filed by Mary E. A. Stocks and husband, that the deed from William L. Henderson and Harriet Henderson to Mary E. A. Stocks be reformed and corrected by striking out the words ‘her bodily heirs.’ The cross-bills were answered, and, replications having been filed, a trial was had in open court, and a decree was again entered dismissing the original bill for want of equity, and the prayers of the cross-bills of the respective cross-complainants were granted, and the deed from William L. Henderson and Harriet Henderson to Mary E. A. Stocks was corrected by striking out the words ‘her bodily heirs,’ and a second appeal has been prosecuted to this court.

HAND, C. J. (after stating the facts as above).

It is first contended that the opinion filed by the court on the former appeal is conclusive against the right of the appellees to recover in this case. The question presented to this court when the case was here before was: Did the decree entered in the case of Stocks et al. v. Stocks et al. by the circuit court of Williamson county, and the master's deed made in pursuance of said decree, divest the fee-simple title of Nona Teel and Elmo Stocks in the real estate in controversy and invest Mary E. A. Stocks with the fee-simple title to said premises? And it was held, for the reasons there stated, said decree was inoperative in that regard, and that the decree and master's deed did not divest said Nona Teel and Elmo Stocks of the fee-simple title to said premises, and that in determining the question of where the fee-simple title to said premises then rested said decree and master's deed should be disregarded, which left the fee-simple title in said Nona Teel and Elmo Stocks. While the question presented for determination on this appeal is: Did the circuit court, on the last trial, property decree, upon the cross-bills filed after the case was reinstated in the circuit court, on the evidence submitted to it, that the deed from William L. Henderson and Harriet Henderson to Mary E. A. Stocks should be reformed and corrected by striking out from said deed the words ‘her bodily heirs,’ and did the court err in reforming and correcting said deed by striking out said words and decreeing that the appellees be invested with the full fee-simple title to said premises, as the remote grantees of said Mary E. A. Stocks? It clearly appears therefore that the question now presented for decision is a different question from the one determined when the case was here before.

In Davis v. Kennedy, 105 Ill. 300, John R. Kennedy had made a conveyance of an 80-acre tract of land to his three daughters, but in describing the land there was an error in the deed; the land being described as located in a township other than the one in which it was located. Kennedy thereafter became...