Case ID: dc_9/html/0362-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

CORNELIA AUSTIN vs. REGINALD FENDALL, EXECUTOR OF THE WILL OF WALTER LENOX, DECEASED, ANGELICA SIMPSON, AND PHILIP FRIDLEY.
    In. Equity. —
    No. 4008.
    Where a conveyance of real estate is properly executed and delivered to the grantee, and is afterward handed to the grantor to he put on record, hut the latter dies without recording it, leaving a will in which he makes specific devises of all his property, but makes no mention of the real estate claimed by the grantee: Held, that it is a complete and valid deed, although it be found after the death of the grantor, by his executors, among his other papers.
    STATEMENT OE THE CASE.
    The complainant brings this action to compel the surrender to her of an unrecorded deed of real estate situate in the city of Washington. A brief statement will show the material point in the case. Walter Lenox, deceased, during his life-time being seized of said real property, on the 21st day of July, 1873, executed and delivered to complainant a deed in fee-simple for the same, which she neglected to record for some time. That said Lenox called upon her, and suggested the necessity of having it recorded. She thereupon delivered it to him for the purpose of having him put it on record in the proper office. That he soon afterward departed this life without having recorded it, and his executor afterward found the deed among the papers of his testator. The executor refuses to deliver it up to complainant. The defendant Mrs. Simpson is the heir-at-law of said Walter Lenox, deceased. It appears also that the will of the deceased was made after the execution and delivery of the deed to complainant, and after the same had been handed to him to be recorded, and that in said will he makes specific devises of all his property, and there is no mention made of the property conveyed by the deed claimed by plaintiff. The court were of opinion that these facts were sustained by the pleadings and proofs in the case, and they therefore ordered and adjudged that the said deed of conveyance was valid and effectual in law, and that it should be delivered to complainant to be recorded, and that she have immediate possession of the said land and premises.
    
      L. G. Mine for complainant.
    
      Bainbridge M. Webb for defendant Simpson.