Court Opinion

ID: 9517924
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 00:37:06.191736+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:26:00.181595
License: Public Domain

Mr. JUSTICE HAYES specially concurring: I concur in all respects with the opinion of the court. More specifically I concur in the policy reason given for denying defendant-appellant’s claim for a credit for the amount by which the improvements and repairs to the realty involved enhanced the value of that realty at the time of the entry of the decree of divorce in favor of plaintiff-appellee. This special concurrence is designed to point out an additional conceptual basis for that denial, using familiar concepts in the law of property held in joint tenancy. We have held herein that the conveyance by appellee to appellant of his joint tenant interest in the residence was not a donative conveyance and that, under the circumstances, appellant must have known there was no donative intent. Hence, appellee retained, by way of resulting trust, tire equitable joint tenant interest in the realty, and appellee and appellant were equitable joint tenants during the period subsequent to the conveyance. It follows that appellee and appellant have at all times held them home as joint tenants: legal prior to the conveyance, and equitable thereafter. The order herein directing, as a part of the property settlement decreed between the parties incident to the entry of the decree of divorce in favor of appellee, that the premises be sold within 90 days and the proceeds be equally divided between the parties has the same effect as would a decree of partition entered in favor of appellee. Appellant had made certain improvements and repairs to the residence, for which she used her own funds. The basic trust of appellant’s position is that, since this situation is equivalent to a partition between joint tenants, she should be credited on final accounting for the improvements and repairs for which she alone had paid out of her own funds. Were this a partition between joint tenants as between whom neither was under any legal duty to support the other, then the contributing cotenant would be prima facie entitled to a credit. (Bayley v. Nichols (1914), 263 Ill. 116, 104 N.E. 1054.) And it would be given irrespective of whether or not the non-contributing joint tenant had been under any legal duty to contribute. The basic reason is that, as between such joint tenants, there exists no rebuttable presumption that the improver and repairer had made the improvements and repairs with a donative intent. Where, however, the joint tenants are husband and wife, a very different situation is presented. The difference is best illustrated by first using a fact situation which does not involve improvements or repairs, namely, the fact situation in which realty is purchased and legal title to that realty is taken by husband and wife in joint tenancy, but the purchase money was provided solely by one of the spouses out of his or her own funds. In that situation, there exists as a matter of law a strong rebuttable presumption that the spouse furnishing the consideration has done so with the intent thereby to make a gift' to the joint tenant interest to the non-contributing spouse; and clear and convincing evidence is required to rebut that presumption, so as to establish instead that the non-contributing spouse is holding his or her joint tenant interest upon a resulting trust for the contributing spouse. Walker v. Walker (1938), 369 Ill. 627, 17 N.E.2d 567; Spina v. Spina (1939), 372 Ill. 50, 22 N.E.2d 687. These joint tenancy cases can be distinguished on the facts (though concededly the distinction is a bit tenuous) from cases in which one spouse furnishes the entire consideration out of his or her own funds, but legal title is then taken solely in the name of the non-contributing spouse. In that situation the presumption of gift will arise only when the consideration has been furnished by the husband. When, on the other hand, the consideration has been furnished by the wife, then a rebuttable presumption of resulting trust will arise, exactly as it would have had the parties not been related as husband and wife. Wright v. Wright (1909), 242 Ill. 71, 89 N.E. 789; Lutyens v. Ahlrich (1923), 308 Ill. 11, 139 N.E. 50; and, for a review of such cases, see Peters v. Meyers (1951), 408 Ill. 253, 96 N.E.2d 493. The reason given for the rule in the latter fact situation is that the husband is under a legal duty to support the wife (which he is presumed to have been fulfilling in part by the conveyance), whereas the wife is under no legal duty to support the husband. Whether or not this concededly tenuous distinction is adequate to reconcile the cases, the fact is that the distinction as to the presumption of gift or of resulting trust based upon the incidence of the legal duty to support was not applied in the fact situation in which the contributing and non-contributing spouses both take title to the realty as joint tenants. (Walker v. Walker (1938), 369 Ill. 627, 17 N.E.2d 567; Spina v. Spina (1939), 372 Ill. 50, 22 N.E.2d 687.) (We note further that reservations have been expressed as to whether the said distinction has any present-day social utility: “Both the law and current social mores cast doubt on these historical attitudes.” (Peek v. Peek (1971), 131 Ill.App.2d 1045 at 1047, 268 N.E.2d 443.) The one case in which the said distinction may appear to have been applied to the joint tenancy situation between spouses (Mauricau v. Haugen (1944), 387 Ill. 186, 56 N.E.2d 367) is itself easily distinguishable by the fact that in that case the wife did not know that the release executed by the security holder of the realty conveyed the realty to husband and wife in joint tenancy; her ignorance of that fact made it impossible to say that there was any presumption of a gift by her to the husband. Turning now from the illustrative fact situation (involving transfers of legal title) to the fact situation in the instant case (involving credit for improvements and repairs), we inquire whether the presumption of gift which exists when legal title is taken between spouses in joint tenancy carries over to the situation in which improvements and repairs have been made at the sole expense of one spouse while the realty is being held by them in joint tenancy (whether legal or equitable). We conclude that it does. Stromsen v. Stromsen (1947), 397 Ill. 260, 73 N.E.2d 272, as construed in Bowman v. Pettersen (1952), 410 Ill. 519 at 532, 102 N.E.2d 787; dictum in Lutticke v. Lutticke (1950), 406 Ill. 181, 92 N.E.2d 754. The conclusion is, therefore, that in this case there exists, as a matter of law, a rebuttable presumption that appellant, when she made the improvements and repairs with her own funds, did so with donative intent. That presumption can be rebutted only by evidence which is clear and convincing. The only evidence in this case which is available to rebut the presumption of gift is the reference by appellant to a marital arrangement by which appellant would use her own funds to maintain the household while appellee would use his own funds to establish and develop a retirement fund for the benefit of both spouses. We conclude that this evidence falls short of the standard of clear and convincing evidence which is required to rebut the presumption of gift. Hence, appellant is not entitled to any credit in this property settlement for the enhanced value of the realty by reason of the improvements and repairs which she had made with her own funds.