McCafferty v. Jones

WASTE, C. J. This is an action to establish a trust as to a one-sixth interest in each of the plaintiffs in two parcels of real property and in an alleged accumulation of money in a sum in excess of $10,000. It appears that the defendants intermarried in the year 1894. At the time, the defendant Ellen A. Jones had a three-year-old son by a former marriage, one of the plaintiffs herein. As a result of this union, three children were born to the defendants. All four children were raised together in the family household. Throughout the many years of their married lives the defendants purchased and sold several parcels of real property, realizing a profit on each transaction. The two parcels of real property and the accumulation of money here involved represent the culmination of defendants’ real estate deals. In .1929, after thirty-five years of married life, the defendant John J ones left home because of marital difficulties. Before doing so, however, he and the defendant Ellen A. Jones withdrew the disputed fund of money from a bank account standing in their joint names and divided the same equally between them, each taking approximately $5,500. Shortly thereafter the defendant John Jones instituted an action for divorce against the defendant herein, Ellen Jones. During the pendency of the divorce action the defendant Ellen Jones recorded a deed of gift covering the two parcels of real property which had been executed by her husband, the defendant John Jones, to her and followed this by executing a deed covering both parcels to one of the plaintiffs herein, Beatrice A. LaVigne, one of the daughters of the parties. Upon learning of this, the defendant John Jones commenced an action against his estranged spouse, the defendant Ellen Jones, and the grantee-daughter, to have the deeds to them set aside. In that action it was found that the deed executed by John Jones to Ellen Jones, his wife, and covering the two parcels here involved, was one of two mutually executed deeds of gift, that it had not been delivered by the grantor and was therefore ineffective for all purposes. It was also found that the deed from the defendant wife to the daughter of the parties failed to convey any right, title or interest in or to said grantee. Judgment was accordingly entered decreeing that John Jones was the owner in fee simple as [572]community property of the two parcels of real property involved in this action, that Ellen Jones, the wife, had a community interest therein, and that the defendant Beatrice A. LaVigne, the daughter of the two parties and one of the plaintiffs herein, had no right, title or interest therein. This judgment became final without any appeal being taken therefrom.