Rickwood v. Smith

BoNd, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The .appellant in 1902 married Isaac T. Crane, who was ■seised in fee of a farm of on© hundred acres in Dorchester County. One child, the appellee, Anna Louise Smith, was born of the marriage in 1903. Isaac T. Crane, the husband ■■and father, died in 1904, and in 1905 the mother remarried with William A. Rickwood.

From the time of her first marriage and throughout the daughter’s minority the appellant lived on the farm with her family, and cultivated it.. During the last few years of her occupancy it was cultivated in conjunction with an adjoining farm owned by the second husband. Upon the death of the first husband the mother was appointed administratrix of his personal estate, and ■■also guardian of the property of the daughter.. She filed one account as guardian in 1909, when the daughter was six years old, and another in 1921, when the daughter came to the age of eighteen.

Both accounts' were duly passed and approved by the Orphan’ Court of Dorchester County. In December, 1921, the daughter married Ross E. Smith, and lived with her husband at another place for the next year. The question of setting off the rights of the mother and daughter respectively in the farm then arose, and after some discussion had failed to bring an agreement, the mother, on December 16, 1922, filed her bill of complaint in equity praying that one-third part of the farm might be set off and .assigned to her as her dower. No claim was made by her ¹⁸⁹ •on account of past rents and profits, the bill averring, on the contrary, that all snoh matters had been settled and closed.

Shortly after the bill was filed the mother and her husband moved to the adjoining farm and the daughter and her husband took possession of the farm in question. In the answer of the daughter and her husband to the mother’s bill, and in the subsequent proceedings, the defense to the claim for assignment of dower has been that the mother has forfeited her right to it because for nineteen years she occupied the farm and managed it in her ow'n interest, enjoying the rents and profits to the exclusion of the daughter from all but a slight share in them, and has committed some waste in removing timber and certain improvements. The defendants also set up laches as a bar to the claim of dower. In the alternative, it is contended that if dower has not been forfeited tlie right to it should bo enforced in equity only after or in conjunction with a decree for an accounting by the mother for the rents and profits of the farm while she lived on it, and also of her settlement of Isaac T. Crane’s personal estate.

Testimony was taken on the facts put in issue by these defenses, and a decree was signed making an allowance of one thousand dollars to the mother in lien of dower, and to settle all differences between the mother and daughter over the rents and profits and other items in dispute. No steps were taken to assign dower by metes and bounds as prayed in the hill, and no testimony was taken to' prove that the circumstances of the property were snoh as to make an assignment impracticable. The view of the learned court below, expressed in the opinion, was that the condition in which the accounts between the mother and darighter, guardian and ward, were found made it impracticable to assign the mother’s dower by metes and bounds, or to make an award in lieu of dower in the form of .a yearly rent, with justice to the defendants. Evidently, the purpose of the court below was to adjudicate and set-tie all of the claims of the two parties in the one suit, and as a means to> that end the ¹⁹⁰ money allowance in lien of dower in tbe land seems to bare been made.

In tbe opinion of this Oonrt tbe mother’s suit for tbe assignment of her dower in tbe land cannot be utilized for that purpose. It is merely for tbe assignment of dower in the land, and there appears to* be no reason for supposing that tbe land in this ease is insusceptible of division. That being true tbe Court has no latitude. It is not free to make a conversion in order to provide means of adjusting cross claims.

Unless in