Court Opinion

ID: 9751274
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 16:19:22.367428+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:42.094576
License: Public Domain

HOOD, Associate Judge
(concurring).
I have no difficulty in agreeing with the majority that the trial court was fully justified in finding that the various amounts not included in the promissory note were outright gifts and were never intended to be loans. I differ with the majority in the treatment of the amounts represented by the note. I think it is dear that both parties originally considered this to be a loan, and I do not believe the evidence justifies the conclusion of the majority that the loan was discharged in consideration of a promise to marry. As I read the record, the promise to marry was not given in exchange for discharge of the loan, but instead, after the promise to marry was given it was the occasion or motive for Mr. Hogeland to make a gift to his fiancée of the indebtedness she owed him. The trial court found “that it was the intention of the decedent to make a gift of this amount to her or to cancel her obligation to pay it.” The evidence supported this finding and in my view the only problem is whether a creditor may make a gift of the debt to the debtor without surrendering or cancelling the evidence of the debt which in this case was a promissory note.
There is a conflict of authorities on this question, but I think this case is controlled by the law of Maryland because the parties lived there, the loan was made there, the note was executed there, and the intended gift was made there. In an early Maryland case, Linthicum v. Linthicum, 1849, 2 Md. Ch. 21, it was held that where the transaction is exclusively between the creditor and the debtor, and the evidence indicates clearly the intention of the creditor that the debt should be forgiven and released to the debt- or himself, delivery or cancellation of the evidence of the debt was not essential to complete the gift. There the court, after the death of the creditor, ordered his executor to deliver up and cancel the sealed note representing the debt. The later case of Howard v. Hobbs, 1915, 125 Md. 636, 94 A. 318, indicates that the rule announced in the Linthicum case is still the law of Maryland. Accordingly, I concur in the result reached by the majority, but place my concurrence on the ground that under the law of Maryland there was a valid gift by Mr. Hogeland to Mrs. Bond of the indebtedness she owed him.