Court Opinion

ID: 9807465
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:05:44.769374+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:39:23.328920
License: Public Domain

Douglas, J.,
dissenting.
I can not concur in the opinion of the Court, because, to my mind, it is erroneous in theory and totally unsupported by authority. There is no analogy between a deed which is sought to be corrected as between the parties, and a note which the payee himself says was erroneously made payable to himself. There is no testimony to the contrary, and if the jury believed the evidence they were compelled to find as they did. The notes were not used by the husband as his own, but were hypothecated as collateral security for the note of the wife. The testimony all tends to show that these notes were the proceeds of the sale of land belonging to the wife. They were, therefore, her property. But it is said that she may have given the notes’ to her husband. If that is true, it devolves upon the defendant to prove it. There is certainly no presumption to that effect. Suppose that the husband had purchased land in his own name with money belonging to his wife, a resulting trust would at once arise in favor of the wife. She need not prove that there was any mutual mistake in making the deed to the husband. She would simply be required to show that the purchase-money was her own, and a resulting trust would at once be created by operation of law. The rule almost universally adopted by text-writers and approved by the Courts, is that laid down by Lord Chief Baron Eyre in Dyer v. Dyer, 2 Cox, 93, which is as follows: “The clear result of all the cases, without a single exception, is that the trust of a legal estate, whether taken in the names of the purchaser and others jointly, or in the names of others without the purchaser, whether in one or several, whether jointly or successive, results to the man who advances the purchase-money.” If this rule universally applies to men sui juris, with how much greater force should it *140apply to the defendant and confiding wife, whose noblest qualities of womanhood would malee her but the easier victim of a careless or designing husband ? It will scarcely be contended that property conveyed to the husband, but paid for by the wife, can be brought under the rule of advancements. As money turned into land would remain the property of the wife, I see no reason why land turned into money should go in a different direction. As J. W. Perry- was not only a large stockholder in the corporation that bore bis name, but was also its President, any notice to him would be notice to his company. There is no ground upon which I can concur in the opinion of the Court.