Court Opinion

ID: 9684564
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 14:01:30.872503+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:57.246099
License: Public Domain

Steele Hays, Justice, dissenting. If it is correct, as appellee argues and the majority agrees, that our law requires the negation of a gift under the circumstances of this case and, by so doing, deprives two sons of a gift intended by their father giving it instead to a virtual stranger, then that law should be reexamined and redefined. The majority opinion concedes that there is no doubt but that the father’s intention was to make a gift to his sons. He had the certificate issued in their names with his own and then actually delivered it to one of them with instructions that it was to be theirs. The requirements of the law were fully met by that delivery and the undisputed intent. In Hopson v. Buford, 225 Ark. 482, 283 S.W. 2d 337 (1955), we said: We have held in the case of Williams v. Smith, 66 Ark. 299, 50 S.W. 513, that, “if the gift be intended in presentí, and be accompanied with such delivery as the nature of the property will admit, and the circumstances and situation of the parties render reasonably possible, it operates at once, and, as between the parties, becomes irrevocable.” The law of gifts inter vivos seems to have changed interstitially from earlier years when it was said that the essential elements were a competent donor, an accepting donee and actual delivery of the property with a present intent to make a gift. Smith v. Van Dusen, 235 Ark. 79, 357 S.W. 2d 22 (1962); Carlson v. Carlson, 224 Ark. 284, 273 S.W. 2d 542 (1954) (Rehearing denied January 10,1955); Aycock v. Bottoms, 201 Ark. 104, 144 S.W. 2d 43 (1940); Waid v. Waid, 188 Ark. 590, 66 S.W. 2d 1052 (1934); and Miles Monroe, 96 Ark. 531, 132 S.W. 643 (1910). Somewhere along the way the wording embraced in Boling v. Gibson, 266 Ark. 310, 584 S.W. 2d 14 (1979), was infused into the definition and permitted to overshadow the key element of the donor’s intent: It must have been the intention of the donor that title pass immediately, and a delivery for safekeeping or for any purpose, either express or implied, other than a specific intent to part with all right, title and interest in, and all dominion and control over the certificates, would not constitute a gift. The result is that greater emphasis is now placed on technical requirements and less on intention. That change may be valid where the gift is unnatural, but where, as here, the gift is consistent with the normal, almost universal, aim of parenthood to benefit its own offspring, then intent should be primary and technique secondary. It is interesting to note that the only case cited in Boling v. Gibson for that wording is Lowe v. Hart, 93 Ark. 548, 125 S.W. 1030 (1910), where this court upheld a gift of non-negotiated certificates of deposit handed by the deceased donor to his housekeeper, facts much less compelling than these. Adherence to form has much to commend it. It is the surest part of the fabric of the law. But where it is at the expense of a fair and just end, it should give way to reason. The result reached below is clearly erroneous and I would reverse. Justice Hickman joins in this dissent.