Court Opinion

ID: 9809149
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 21:02:19.333284+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:25:20.002526
License: Public Domain

*193Avery, J.
(concurring): The only testimony offered to subject the land conveyed by the father to his daughter (now Mrs. Strickland, then Mrs. Green) by deed absolute upou its face, with the burden of the trust, is that of the grantee’s brother, and is as follows: “ When my father divided up the land he told me and T. B. Holden and Frank Green, who was then my sister’s husband, that the Harris debt had not been paid, that he wished to divide up his land and we must help to pay that debt. He said he would do what he could, but if he could not pay it all we ■would have to pay the balance. This was the day the land was being run out for division. Mine had been run out before that time. Frank Green was my sister’s husband and was there. My sister was not present. I went home after the land was surveyed, and was not present when the deeds were written. ”
It is an established rule of law that, in order to the creation of a parol trust thereby, the declaration of a grantor must be made either prior to, or cotemporaneously with the execution of the deed, and must be sufficiently explicit and definite to indicate clearly what is the subject matter of the trust, the extent of the charge or burden imposed and the"purpose for which it is imposed. 1 Perry on Trusts, Sec. 77. This principle arises out of the very nature of a trust, which is an unexecuted use, and which, when created before the enactment of the statute of uses, by a declaration accompanying or preceding a feoffment, must have been so certain that the witnesses could bear in their memories such a clear and determinate recollection of the conscientious duty devolved upon the feoffee, as would enable the ecclesiastical court to enforce it, had simply said, when erecting monuments to indicate division boundaries, that unless he should meantime discharge a certain debt, his children, who would be enfeoffed by him of shares *194unequal in quantity and value of bis land, must pay it, without indicating in what proportion, no court of conscience would have assumed to declare that his purpose was to require them to pay equal portions of the debt out of unequal bounties bestowed by him. This is but an illustration of the necessity for the rule that, while trusts attending the transmission of the legal estate by deed may be created by oral declarations and while the proof need not be supported by testimony such as is required to convert an absolute deed into a mortgage (Shields v. Whitaker, 82 N. C., 516) the Courts will not attempt to enforce them unless the. purpose of the grantor be clearly expressed. 1 Perry, supra, Sec. 83. “ Indeed (says Perry in the section cited) Courts require demonstration on the latter point, and the trust will not be executed, if the precise nature of it (the subject matter of the trust) and the particular persons who are to take as cestuis que trtost, and the proportions in which they are to take, cannot be ascertained.” The same rule as to ascertaining from the terms of the trust the certainty of the subject matter and the manner of disposition of the trust fund among those who are to receive it, obtains, whether the trust be declared orally or in writing, and whether by devise by other writing, or by oral declarations made prior to, or accompanying the execution of a deed, and whether the trust is created for the benefit of children or in favor of creditors. It is competent to create a charge upon land to pay debts by declarations made at the same time and subject to the same limitations, as where the trust is raised to provide for children. 3 Pom. Eq. Jur., Sec. 1244 to 1248. In either case, the declaration, in order to its enforcement, ought to show or in some way enable the court to ascertain, either in what proportion the burden is to be borne by several holders of the legal estate, or in what ratio benefits are to be apportioned between cestuis que trust, as *195tbe case may be. Speaking of this subject, Lewin (Vol. 1, star page 56 of his work on Trusts) says that a trust will not “be executed if the precise nature of the trust cannot be ascertained.” Has the exact nature of the trust been determined in this case? Id cerium est quod cerium reddi potest. It has been found by the jury that the tract of land conveyed to the feme defendant was one-third in value of the whole landed estate of her father. The purpose of the father therefore to impose a charge of one-third of whatever debt was still due at the time of his death, may be fairly implied from his language. This conclusion is not reached without difficulty, but it is probably safe to rest the decision upon the principle that it was the expressed intention of Richard Holden, Sr., to charge all of the tracts of land conveyed to his children by voluntary deed with the debt for the purchase money unpaid at his death, and that he could so charge it by declaration preceding or accompanying the execution of the deed. 3 Pome-roy, supra. If her share is one-third, as the jury found, it is not inequitable to subject it to one-third of the debt still due, in furtherance of what appeared to be her father’s purpose. If the amount of the charge in favor of the original creditor was one-third of the debt, then when her brother discharged the lien, was he not subrogated pro tanto to the rights of the creditor against her ? It must be admitted, as already stated, that Richard Holden, Sr., could create and did create by his declaration a charge upon the whole of the land in favor of the creditor, and that charge could have been enforced by the creditor or his representatives. 2 Story Eq. Jur., p. 589, Sec. 1244.
If T. B. Holden was his father’s surety and as such paid the whole'of the debt, then the statute (Gode, See. 2093 to 2096) gives him a right of action against co-sureties at law, and also such priority as the creditor would have had as a *196claimant against bis father’s estate. The creditor had a priority as an incumbrance holding a claim that must have been satisfied out of the land before it could have been subjected to pay any claim against the grantee and before her title could be perfected. 19 Am. & Eng. Enc., 81; Abbott’s Law Dictionary — Priority. If by virtue of the declaration a charge was created in favor of Harris the creditor, then T. B. Holden on payment of that debt, constituting the charge and having priority over other claims, was, as surety, subrogated in equity to the rights of the creditor, arising either out of any prior lien or indemnity in his favor, against the land conveyed to the feme defendant (Peebles v. Gay, 115 N. C., 38) and was entitled to recover one-third of the debt, which he paid as surety of his father, from the feme defendant as the holder subject to the charge imposed by her father upon the one-third in value of the land burdened with the debt, which he conveyed to her. It seems to have been conceded, if it did not appear positively, that T. B. Holden was, though nominally a principal, in reality the surety of his father. Welfare v. Thompson, 83 N. C., 276. For the reasons given, I think the judgment should be affirmed.