Dillfelder v. Winterling

Pattison J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The property involved in this appeal, consisting of a leasehold interest in a' house and lot of land situated on 12th Street, in the City of Baltimore, was on the 8th day of Feb ⁶²⁷ ruary, 1915, conveyed unto Charles A. Winterling and the ■appellee, Lena Winterling, his wife, as tenants by the entirety. They, with their children, occupied the property until the death of the husband in nineteen hundred and seventeen. 'Thereafter his widow, with her youngest daughter, Anna, the appellant, continued to occupy it and are occupying it at this time. On the 7th day of July, nineteen hundred and twenty, the mother, Lena Winterling, conveyed the property to her said 'daughter.

The latter in December, nineteen hundred and twenty, five months after said conveyance to her, married Erank Dillfelder. After her marriage, she, with her husband, lived for seven months at the home of his parents, when they returned to the home of her1 mother, where they have both since lived. On the 24th day of January, nineteen hundred and twenty-four, Mrs. Winterling filed her bill in this case asking that the deed from her to her1 daughter, executed on the 7th •day of July, nineteen hundred and twenty, he cancelled and set aside. The bill alleges “that during the summer of 1920, the plaintiff was in ill health and the said defendant represented to her that if she, the plaintiff, was in ill health, it would he better to convey said property to her in order to avoid any trouble or expense in the event anything should happen to said plaintiff, and expressly promised that if the said plaintiff would convey the property to her, she would give it hack to her, the plaintiff, at any time she might want it; that thereupon, pursuaded by the defendant’s representations and "relying on and having faith in her promise to reconvey said property on demand, the salid plaintiff executed an assignment, conveying said property to the defendant, who at that time was known as Anna Winterling, being unmarried * * *■ that said plaintiff received no consideration from the ■defendant or any one else for said conveyance”; that said •deed was recorded and the charge for same paid by the ⁶²⁸ plaintiff, but it was never delivered to the defendant and still remains in the possession of the plaintiff; that the defendant resided with her mother until her marriage on December 23rd, 1920, when she left her mother’s home; “that when the property was originally acquired by the plaintiff and her husband, * * * a mortgage was placed thereon with the Canton Permanent Building Association, of Baltimore City, in the amount of eleven hundred dollars; that after the death of her husband, the plaintiff continued to pay off said mortgage, malting her last payment December 5th, 1922, and has paid all the expenses, including ground rent, water-rent, taxes, etc., due on said property; that the defendant has never paid one cent toward the purchase of said property or toward the expenses due thereon; that the said defendant, has always recognized the plaintiff as the owner of said property and has never assumed any dominion over the same;; that the plaintiff has demanded from the defendant a re-conveyance of said property, but the defendant has refused' and still refuses to convey same to the plaintiff, claiming that the plaintiff has no interest therein.” The defendant, Mrs. Dillfelder, filed her answer to the bill, averring that the deed was not executed at her request, and that her mother was- not in ill health at the time of its-execution; that upon the direction of her mother, she went to work at the age of twelve years and continued thereat until she was married in nineteen hundred and twenty, at the age-of nineteen years ; that the money earned by her was given, to her mother “except small sums which she was permitted' to retain for her own use,” that her mother promised her-during those years to convoy the property to her, “partly for the consideration of receiving her wages * * * and partly because the defendant was the plaintiff’s youngest child and! the one that remained longest with her, and who, the plaintiff said, had done the most for her, and because all the other children, consisting of one son and one daughter, had! homes which they owned, while the defendant had none”;; that at.. ⁶²⁹ the time of said conveyance the plaintiff said to the defendant, “This is now yonr home, keep it as long as you possibly can,” warning her against any future husband securing control of it, saying that “it would he her home all her life”; that the “conveyance was absolutely voluntary and without any conditions attached to it and was so regarded by both the grantor and the grantee”; that upon her return to her mother, after living with the parents of her husband, as stated in the hill, she paid all operating expenses, “including' the cost of the table, and the plaintiff took her meals with the defendant without paying therefor until she was moved to demand that the defendant convey hack the property to her.

Upon the defendant refusing to do so, the plaintiff, while continuing1 to live in the same house, furnished her-own table”; that she made efforts to secure the possession of the deed to said property, but “obstacles were thrown in her way by her mother, the plaintiff.” She averred in her answer “that she offered to pay off the mortgage, taxes and water rent, and tried to do so, but the plaintiff anticipated her.” She denied therein that “she has always recognized the plaintiff as the owner of the property and that she has never assumed any dominion over the same.” That “prior to moving hack into the premises after her marriage, extensive repairs were made to, the house through the labor of ber husband, all materials used on the house being paid for by the defendant.” She also averred that the plaintiff “has made many efforts through cajolery and coercion to induce the defendant to execute a deed to the said property, hut that the defendant has always refused to do so, claiming the property as her own, hut always permitting the plaintiff to live there, it being her intention to permit the plaintiff to live there during all the rest of her natural life.” The defendant also averred in her answer “that there was no trust attached to the conveyance to her by her mother of the propeitv in question, and that she never at any time entered into any agreement, in writing or verbal, to recoil ⁶³⁰ vey the. said property to the plaintiff.” And concluded her answer by pleading “the Statute of Erauds.” The court, after hearing the evidence upon the issues joined, passed its decree cancelling and setting aside said deed. It is from that decree that this appeal has been taken. The undisputed evidence is to-the effect that the deed from Mrs. Winterling to her daughter was voluntary and without consideration and that the property conveyed thereby was acquired largely by the individual labor of the grantor; that at the time of her husband’s death there was still owing upon the mortgage, placed thereon by herself and husband, a considerable sum, which was altogether paid by her, and much of it paid after the execution of the deed to her* daughter. Hot only was the mortgage debt paid by her, but she likewise paid all the ground rent, water rent, taxes and other expenses upon the property, both before and .after the execution of said deed.

The deed was recorded and the charge therefor paid by the grantor. It, however, was never delivered to the grantee, but the deed, as well as the property itself, has remained in the possession of the grantor, and whenever any part of the property has been rented, the rent received therefor has been paid to the mother without any objection or claim thereto made by the daughter. The grantor testified that she was very fond of her daughter and loved her dearly. As she expressed it, “She was the love of my heart,” and she wished her to have the property in question upon her death.

In the summer of 1920 she was in ill health and, though .attempting to do her daily work, which took her from her home, she nevertheless was extremely apprehensive as to the outcome of her physical condition. Tn speaking of it she .said “I was feeling bad and getting older, and I said, 'Sometimes I feel good and sometimes bad, and by me going away T might drop on the street.’ ” It was at this time that her daughter approached her, as she had done a number of times before, and asked her to convey the property to her, saying ⁶³¹ “Any time you want it you can have it back.” In response to the danghter’s request, accompanied by her promise to re-convey the property to her when she wished her to do so, a deed was drawn and executed by the mother while sick, conveying the property to her daughter. Thereafter she called upon her daughter to reconvey the property to her, hut the latter refused to reconvey it to her, saying “She was going to let it- stay as it is.” Mrs. Dillieldcr, the daughter, testified that her mother gave and conveyed to her the property, as she had promised, without receiving from her any promise to reconvey it to> her. She testified, however, that she did tell her mother that she could have a home there as long as she lived.

She also testified that on one occasion, not long after her marriage, her mother said to her “You can sell the house and put me out.” She was asked what reply she made to this statement, and she said, “I was living at my mother-ia-law’s at the time, T said, TIow do you get that way, what is the matter with von ?’ ” and then when asked what she then said, she replied, “My mother-in-law quieted her down and we sat there and talked it over. T said I never had anything like that in my head.” The witness further testified that she regarded the house as her own, though she admitted that she, though married and living in the house with her husband, never paid or offered to pay any part of the mortgage debt then resting as a lien upon the property, and never thereafter paid the taxes, ground or water rents thereon; that on one or more occasions she went to the city hall to pay the taxes or water rent, hut found them paid; that she would have paid them, but was anticipated by her mother, although, when called upon by her mother to pay for the release of the mortgage amounting to five dollars, after it had been paid off by Mrs. Winterling, she refused to pay it and it was paid by her mother. She was asked if she ever offered her mother money with which to pay the taxes, rents and other hills against the property and she replied, “Yo, ⁶³² sir; I wanted to pay them myself and have my name at the bottom of the bill, so' I would know I paid them. Q. How do you know your name was not on the bill?

A. Because 1 knew my mother wa's not so kind hearted to put my name on the bill. She was all for herself. Q. She conveyed this property to you, didn’t she? A. She would never had done it unless she had to.” She was then asked by the court, “Why do you say that, why did she have to ?” She replied “She always promised to give it to me.

She put it in my name.” Frank Dillfelder, the husband of the appellant, when placed upon the stand by his wife, testified that he was a visitor at Mrs. Winterling’s home for about three years before his marriage to her daughter. He said lie had frequently heard Mrs. Winterling say during that period that she intended to put the house in the daughter’s name and heal’d her tell her daughter, on the day the deed was executed, that she had put it in her name. The daughter replied thereto, saying: “She (the mother) would always have a home as long as she lived, so long as she done what was. right and acted respectable.” He had often heard Mrs. Winterling say to her daughter she would like to have the house back. His wife at such times would reply by saying “She should be satisfied so long as she has got a home.” He never heard his wife say she would deed it back to her, and ho knew she was not going to convey it to her.

The repairs to the property made by the appellant mentioned in the answer consisted only of work that Dillfelder himself did on the house and garage, and the furnishing of •certain materials which he said would probably amount to fifty dollars. It is contended by the appellee that, upon the facts and circumstances stated, the conveyance of the property to the daughter by the mother, with the daughter’s promise to re-convey it to her when asked to- do so, raised a constructive trust in favor of the mother, to the extent that the daughter was to hold the title of the property for her1 mother until ⁶³³ asked, to reconvey it to her. And that upon her failure and refusal to convey it when so asked, she became a trustee ex maleficio, and, as a result thereof, the mother is entitled either to have the deed cancelled and set aside or the property reconveyed to her. It is said in 26 R. C. L. 1238, “Whenever a person acquires the legal title to land or other property by voluntary conveyance by means of an intentionally false and fraudulent verbal promise to hold the same for a certain specific purpose, * * * as, for example’, a promise to convey the land to a designated individual, to reconvey it to the grantor, or the like, * * * and, having thus- fraudulently obtained the title, he retains, uses and claims the property as absolutely his own, the whole transaction by means of which the ownership is obtained will be treated, in equity, as a scheme of actual deceit, and the court will treat the person so acquiring the legal title as a trustee, and decree him to hold the title for the benefit of the true beneficiary.

The Statute of Frauds, which was intended to prevent frauds, turns against him as the perpetrator of a fraud. It is not, therefore, the fact that the bargain by which he obtained the title is verbal that governs a case, but the fact that he procured the title to be made to him in confidence, the breach of which is fraudulent and in bad faith. The ground of equitable relief and immunity from the statute is the fraud perpetrated, not the agreement to hold in trust. Such a trust does not affect the deed, but acts upon the gift as it reaches the possession of the grantee’, and the foundation for the trust is that equity will then interfere and raise a trust in.favor of the person intended to be benefited, in order to prevent a fraud. * * * What constitutes fraud in the case of a promise to hold in trust or reconvey on receiving a voluntary conveyance sufficient to take the case out of the operation of the 'Statute of Frauds, depends in a large measure on the relation to each other of the parties to the transaction.

Fraud is much more readily inferred where the parties occupy a confidential or fiduciary relation toward each other, and it seems to be well ⁶³⁴ ■settled that where a conveyance is made between parties standing in such relation to each other, on a parol agreement of the grantee to hold the land in trust for or convey it to some one else, when in fact the grantee has no intention of performing the agreement, but intends to