Bauer v. Bauer

Briscoe, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This appeal is taken from a decree of the Circuit Court of Baltimore City vacating a deed to the defendants of a house on Baltimore street, dated the loth of November, 1891 ; and a bill of sale to two of the defendants of certain personal property, dated the 19th of December, 1891. The ²⁴² bill was dismissed as to a deed to two of the defendants of three small houses on Lemon street, dated the 12th of May, 1891 ,and from this part of the decree no appeal has been taken. The bill is filed by a brother and sister against a brother and two sisters, and charges that the grantor, the mother of the parties, was incompetent to make a valid deed or contract, and that the conveyances were obtained by fraud and undue influence exercised by the defendants.

All of these allegations are specifically denied by the answers. The undisputed facts show that the grantor in the deeds was an old woman 74 years of age, and suffering from a cancer, which had been pronounced incurable by her physicians and from which she died on the nth of January, 1892. She was a widow at the time of her death and left seven children and several grandchildren ■ surviving her, all of whom except the defendants had left her house shortly after becoming of age, and only two of whom, a son and daughter, are party plaintiffs to this suit. She conducted a store and a scouring establishment and the property had been acquired by the joint labor of herself and the defendants.

She gave to her two daughters, who were unmarried, the three houses on Lemon street estimated to be worth $ 1,200, and the furniture and store fixtures worth $150. The Baltimore street house which she had purchased in 1868, for $3,500, she gave to the three defendants equally. There were no exceptions to the large mass of evidence in the record, although much of it has no material bearing upon the case. ■ It is insisted on the part of the appellees that the relations existing between the grantor and grantees at the time of the execution of the deeds, were of such a character, as requires the application of the equitable doctrine, applied to gifts between persons standing in a confidential and fiduciary relation to each other. It is well settled law that a gift or voluntary conveyance between parties standing in the confidential relation of child to parent is prima facie void, and can only be upheld upon proof that it was the free, voluntary and unbiased act of the ²⁴³ person making it.

Whitridge v. Writridge, 76 Md. 54 . This is so, because a child is presumed to be under the control of parental influence, as long as the dominion of the parent lasts, and whilst that dominion exists it lies on the parent maintaining the gift to disprove the exercise of parental influence, by proof that the child had independent advice or in some other way. But a voluntary conveyance of property from a parent to a child rests upon a different principle and is not prima facie void. It turns, says Mr. Pomeroy in his work upon Equity Jurisprudence, upon the exercise of actual undue influence and not upon any presumption of invalidity.

A gift from parent to child is certainly not presumed to be invalid, 2nd Pom. Equity, sec. 1399. If, however, the confidential relation is shown by competent proof to exist, then the burden is imposed upon the grantee to show that the transaction was a righteous one. In Eakle et al. v. Reynolds, 54 Md. 307 , it was said, a Court cannot be too vigilant and cau'tious in considering the proof, and in determining whether the gift was the free, voluntary and intelligent act of the donor, yet the relation must be such as to imply dominion or control over the property or person of the donor and not such a relation which one might naturally expect to arise from kindship and mutual affection.

We have carefully considered the proof and find nothing in the record in this case to justify the contention that the defendants exercised such dominion over their mother as to bring this case within the rule law contended for by the appellees. On the contrary, the proof is abundant that she was a woman of great