Court Opinion

ID: 9531650
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:13:40.871043+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:33.601019
License: Public Domain

HOWE, Justice
(dissenting):
I dissent. The finding of fact on lack of delivery of the deed is not supported by the evidence. The trial court found “no evidence was presented by defendant as to the delivery” of the deed. That is not so. Both the defendant and his wife, who appears as the notary on the deed, testified that the plaintiff executed the deed when she came to their home on one occasion to pick up a payment of child support. After signing it, she left the deed with them. This certainly constituted evidence of delivery. It is inconsequential whether the notary signed her name and affixed her seal to the deed the same day that it was signed by the plaintiff, or whether that was done shortly afterwards. The notary testified that the plaintiff signed the deed in her presence either on the date it bears, May 30,1975, or within a week of that date.
The majority opinion concludes that the plaintiff did not appear before the notary *101and thus the acknowledgment on the deed was invalid; hence, there is no presumption of delivery. The difficulty with that conclusion is that the trial court found she executed the deed but it made no finding of fact respecting whether plaintiff appeared before the notary. Therefore, the majority opinion is unwarranted in holding that the acknowledgment was invalid.
The defendant produced testimony of three witnesses that plaintiff was present in his home on the occasion on which he claims she signed the deed. Two of those witnesses (defendant and his wife) testified that the plaintiff signed the deed in the presence of the notary. On the other hand, the plaintiff could not remember ever signing the deed and maintained that she must have done so unwittingly. The case should be remanded to the trial court to make an adequate and complete finding on this vital issue of whether she did in fact appear before the notary. If the plaintiff did appear, then the acknowledgment was proper and the deed was entitled to be recorded. As a recorded deed, delivery and consideration would be presumed. In that case, the burden is on the plaintiff to prove lack of delivery and lack of consideration — rather than the burden being placed on the defendant as the trial court apparently perceived it to be.
Just as delivery and consideration became issues during the trial, so did the issue of whether the plaintiff held the property in trust for the defendant. He testified that he conveyed his one-half interest in the property to the plaintiff to secrete it from loss to his creditors, and that plaintiff promised to convey it back to him when his financial condition improved. She did not really deny this but endeavored to relate her promise to reconvey the property to an oral promise made by the defendant to provide support for her children from her previous marriage. (In the divorce the defendant was given custody of the child of the parties and hence was not ordered to pay any child support for her). I would remand this case for findings of fact on whether there is a basis for imposing a constructive trust on the property in favor of the defendant. See Section 44, Restatement of Trusts 2d (1959); Haws v. Jensen, 116 Utah 212, 209 P.2d 229 (1949).
I dissent from the holding of the majority opinion that there was no abuse of discretion by the trial court in determining that the plaintiff’s denial of her signature on the deed was justifiable. No explanation is given for that conclusion. I believe that it was an abuse of discretion because she readily admitted at trial that she had signed the deed. This was after the defendant had expended a considerable sum to employ a handwriting expert to disprove her earlier denial. She offered no explanation for that denial except that she could not remember signing it. However, she always agreed that the signature looked like hers.
STEWART, J., concurs in the dissenting opinion of HOWE, J.