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172 Mass. 476

Cooley v. Cooley

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided January 9, 1899

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1899-01-09

Bill in equity, filed March 7, 1898, against George Henry Cooley and Lulu Josephine Cooley, minor children of the plaintiff, to establish a resulting trust in land in favor of the plaintiff. Trial in the Superior Court, before Braley, J., who reported the case for the consideration of this court, in substance as follows.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1899-01-09

How this case has been cited

Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently October 1943

13 state decisions

60189919001910192019301940decided

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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Hammostd, J.

¶1The general rule is, that, where upon a purchase of property the conveyance is taken in the name of one person while the purchase money is paid by another, the parties being strangers to each other, a resulting trust immediately is presumed in favor of the party paying the money. Perry on Trusts, § 126, and cases cited.

¶2But in some cases where the parties are not strangers to each other, as in the case of a purchase by the husband in the name of his wife, or a father in the name of his child, the presumption is that there is no resulting trust, but that the transaction is in the nature of a gift or advancement. Perry on Trusts, § 143, and cases cited.

¶3The authorities are somewhat in conflict as to whether, in the case of a purchase by a widow in the name of her minor child, the presumption is in favor of a resulting trust in favor of the mother, or a gift or advancement to the child. Bennett v. Bennett, 10 Ch. D. 474, 478. Sayre v. Hughes, L. R. 5 Eq. 376. Lewin on Trusts, (9th ed.) 187. Batstone v. Salter, L. R. 10 Ch. 431. Murphy v. Nathans, 46 Penn. St. 508.

¶4But whatever may be the presumption it is liable to be rebutted by evidence.

¶5We have examined the evidence in this case, and are of the *478opinion that the plaintiff at the time the deed was taken in the name of her children did not intend to make a gift or advancement to them, but intended that the beneficiary interest should be exclusively hers, and that she was very much surprised when she was told that the effect of what she had done might be to the contrary. The deed was not intended as a gift or advancement, and there is a resulting trust in favor of the plaintiff.

¶6Decree for the plaintiff.

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