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121 Mass. 424

Regan v. Howe

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided January 6, 1877

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1877-01-06

Petition fur partition. At the trial in the Superior Court, before Wilkinson, J., without a jury, the petitioner put in a deed from one-Catharine T. Howe, to herself and the two respondents of the land in question, of one undivided third part thereof, and rested her case The respondents then called Josiah C. Blaisdell, Esquire, who testified that in 1868, the petitioner, with the respondent Howe, came into his office, when she agreed to sell to Howe her third part of the…

Relies on Wheelwright v. Wheelwright · Souverbye v. Arden · Hatch v. Hatch

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1877-01-06

How this case has been cited

Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently April 2004

2 district · 10 state decisions

3018771880189019001910192019301940195019601970198019902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Colt, J.

¶1Treating the deed executed by the petitioner, and left with the scrivener by the agreement of both parties, as an escrow, in accordance with the petitioner’s present claim, still we are of opinion that there was evidence to warrant a jury in finding a delivery sufficient to vest , the title in the grantee Howe, one of the present respondents. The case was tried by the court, with )ut a jury, and the finding was for the respondents.

¶2*426There was evidence that the conditions, upon which the deed was to be delivered to the grantee, had been fully performed, so that the equitable title to it was in the grantee ; that the scrivener, in discharge of his trust, intending to complete its delivery, gave it to the petitioner herself to carry and deliver to the grantee, and that she took it away declaring that she took it for that purpose. This is enough to constitute a delivery, if subse • quently accepted as a delivery by the grantee. It is not necessary, as between the parties themselves, even when both are present, that the deed should be placed in the actual custody of the grantee, or of his agent. It may remain with the grantor, and it will be good, if there are other acts and declarations sufficient to show an intention to treat it as delivered. The significance of the acts or declarations relied on will be greatly strengthened where the deed is placed in the hands of a third person, by the fact that the conditions upon which the delivery of the deed depends have been fully performed. The destruction or detention of the deed by the grantor, after such delivery, cannot divest the grantee’s estate. The ruling requested was properly refused. Moore v. Hazelton, 9 Allen, 102, 106. Souverbye v. Arden, 1 Johns. Ch. 240. Scrugham v. Wood, 15 Wend. 545. See also Wheelwright v. Wheelwright, 2 Mass. 447, 452; Hatch v. Hatch, 9 Mass. 307; Foster v. Mansfield, 3 Met. 412.

¶3Exceptions overruled.

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