Court Opinion

ID: 9794733
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:10:43.069295+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:19:40.180467
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Chief Justice.
I concur in the result reached by Mr. Justice WADE in his dissent.
I think there is considerable merit in what he says to the effect that under the facts of this particular case, where blood kinfolk obviously are doing the best they can to protect a little girl’s future security, the restriction against alienation, as a public policy represents, perhaps, an irresistible force meeting an immovable object that equally has roots in public policy. Reflecting on the two, and in view of the comparatively short-lived restriction here, I am inclined to the conclusion that the former *438should yield to the latter. Were this a case where a grantor imposed the restriction on the grantee, in an ordinary situation divorced from the facts of this case, I am inclined to bear with the majority.
Irrespective of my strong sympathy with Mr. Justice Wade’s studied conclusion, based principally on inapplicability of the rule against such alienation, I am convinced that the trial court should have dismissed the complaint for two separate reasons touched upon, at least, in Mr. Justice Wade’s dissent:
1) The matter was res judicata, and the action was a collateral attack on a probate decree that was entered in a different division of the court by a different judge, six years before, at the behest and request of this very plaintiff.
2) The parties to the transaction were not in privity with respect to the title to the property.
As to 1) : The probate court had jurisdiction of the subject matter and all the parties before it. They all agreed to and urged the court to enter the decree of distribution, which in clear and unmistakable terms carried out their stipulated wishes. Obviously it was designed to protect the little girl, — no one else. It was consonant with a strong public policy to do this, the policy against restraint, against alienation to the contrary notwithstanding. I cannot subscribe to the argument that the contract, being void because of a restraint against alienation feature, was void from the beginning and consequently the court had no jurisdiction to hear it. Some court first has to* determine its invalidity and certainly has jurisdiction to do that. Should this-court reverse a trial court that announces that it has no jurisdiction because of invalidity ex contractu, what happens to the case? Surely we then say there was jurisdiction. What I am trying to convey is a conclusion that in determining such a matter where there has been a former probate decree, any attack thereon is collateral if launched in an independent action, unconnected with the probate case, its file, its number, etc. previously decided I think attacking the first decree in a second and different case, ordinarily is an unpermitted collateral attack. This should be apparent in this case when every member of the court knows that probate matters are filed in the Probate Division of the District Court, and is assigned a number in chronological order that is entirely foreign to the ordinary case in matters of torts, quiet title, foreclosures, divorces and the like. Special clerks are assigned to probate only. If someone wishes to attack a probate decree it should be done in the Probate Division, and directed to the alleged offensive decree of distribution, in the case where the decree was entered. Otherwise there would be no reason to complain about an independent action brought in Daggett County, for example, to attack an erstwhile valid probate decree entered in Kane County, by a judge *439that never has or will sit in Kane County. The whole thing would lead to indecision, would provide an easy vehicle to destroy a decree entered many years before in a different court and county. And it is no answer to say that the first case happened in the same judicial district as that employed by the second.
As to 2) : I have checked the citations in the main opinion, and with possibly rare exception, they deal with a grantor-grantee relation. The restriction inured to the benefit of the grantor or someone else, who having an interest of some kind in the fee, divested himself of that interest, but attempted to place a barnacle on a ship carrying title on its voyage. This of course, the rule strikes down. But that is not the case here. The defendants never had an interest in the property. There was no privity of title or with respect to its hypothecation. This simply is a case where grandparents, for a consideration, said if you won’t sell the property until our granddaughter reaches 21 or marries, we will pay you $9,-000.
This case is not much different than a 20-year option to buy, exercisable only at the 20th year. As a practical matter, which I take it, has something to do with public policy, the optionor would have a rough time selling the property during that 20-ycar period. Cases seem to distinguish such a case hut it strikes me as being a case where you measure the length of hair on a caterpillar.
A mortgage note that calls for payment only at the 20th year is about tht same with respect to alienation, with a similar refinement in some cases.
An irrevocable trust containing a provision against alienation by the trustee for 20 years, obviously designed to protect children, is in the same boat, with cases similarly sustaining them where the grantor completely and irrevocably has divested himself of the fee.
I could go along with these distinctions as practical conclusions based on other public policy justifying them in a highly complex world, making them exceptions to the rule against restraint on alienation, as are the 32 exceptions to the hearsay rule, and still espouse the rule itself. I have difficulty, however, in determining why, if I am a party not vested with any interest in property, I could not agree to pay a substantial sum to my neighbor if he would refrain from selling his property for a reasonable time until I could readjust my own property interest, anticipating the possibility of my neighbor’s conveyance that would result in ruining my home.
I think the authorities cited in the main opinion and the reasons ascribed are in-apropos in this particular case and the case should be returned for dismissal.