Kornmann v. Safe Deposit & Trust Co.

Sloan, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This appeal is from an order sustaining a demurrer to the appellant’s amended cross-bill of complaint, the appellant having declined to further amend. The cross-bill alleges that at the beginning of banking hours on January 3, 1939, there was on deposit in the Eutaw Savings Bank of Baltimore the sum of $31,818.14 to the credit of “C. Edward Snyder, in trust, until withdrawal thereof, for himself and Carrie H. Snyder, joint ²⁷² owners, subject to withdrawal by either, the balance at death of either to belong to the survivor”; that the deposit represented, as charged in the fourth paragraph of the cross-bill, “moneys accumulated by prudence, joint efforts and activities of C. Edward Snyder and Carrie H. Snyder, his wife, in their business enterprises, and deposited • in various amounts at various times”; that on January 3, 1939, C. Edward Snyder, without the knowledge or consent of his wife, who was then confined to a nursing home, with a serious illness, withdrew the deposit and deposited the entire amount of it in his own name in the same bank, to his sole and separate order and use; that thereafter on July 12, 1939, C. Edward Snyder executed a will, by which the residue of his estate, after certain specific bequests of personal property and $1,000 dollars in cash to a church, was left to the Safe Deposit & Trust Company, in trust for Mrs. Snyder for her life with remainders to his near relatives; that the transfer of the deposit from the joint names of C. Edward Snyder and his wife to himself “did fraudulently deprive his wife, the said Carrie H. Snyder, of all benefit and enjoyment of the said moneys, to which she was lawfully entitled, and did destroy her right of survivorship in the said fund”; that Mr. Snyder died September 5, 1939, and Mrs. Snyder, March 6, 1940. The appellant then prayed that the Safe Deposit & Trust Company and Horace Robinson Ford, executors of C. Edward Snyder, be enjoined from paying over the said sum of money so deposited by C. Edward Snyder to his own account, and that they be required to account for the sum of $31,818.14 with interest from January 3, 1939.

To this the cross-defendants, appellees, demurred, and particularly to the fourth paragraph, which had alleged that the fund was the result of the joint efforts of the husband and wife, though there was nothing to say how they had jointly contributed, but" our view and the decisions of this court is that it makes no difference whose efforts produced the fund unless the charge of fraud be clearly alleged and proved. ²⁷³ The burden of the appellant’s argument is that Mrs. Snyder, and those who would inherit from her, have no share in the fund, simply because Mr. Snyder made this transfer, without her knowledge or consent, and that the demurrer admits as a fact that