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19 Ill. 349

Smith v. Smith

Illinois Supreme Court

Decided December 15, 1857

Illinois Supreme Court · decided 1857-12-15

The bill alleges that complainant, in the year 1841, being twenty-one years old, was living with his father, Robert Smith; that a contract was made between himself and father, by which complainant agreed to take care of, support and maintain his said father during the natural life of said Robert; and that, in consideration thereof, the said Robert, the father, agreed to sell, give and convey to complainant the farm on which he resided, and which is particularly described in…

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1857-12-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently December 1917

5 state decisions

201857186018701880189019001910decided

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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Breese, J.

¶1Whatever may have been the contract between the appellant and his father, in relation to the lands claimed in his bill, it was rescinded, after his father’s death, by the act of appellant himself.

¶2The proofs show that appellant presented his claim before the Probate Court, against his father’s estate, for the very services which he now claims were the consideration of the sale of the land to him, and recovered a judgment for three thousand dollars, being the full measure of his compensation, as fixed by himself. He has thus disaffirmed the very contract which he now seeks to enforce against the legal representatives of his father. This he cannot do. In Herrington v. Hubbard, 1 Scam. R. 569, this court say: “ Bringing a suit to recover back the consideration money, after a breach of the contract, is equivalent to an express disaffirmance of the contract, and is to be regarded as sufficient evidence of the determination of the party to treat it as rescinded, inasmuch as the consideration can only be recovered back on the ground of a disaffirmance of the contract.”

¶3We see no difference, in principle, between that case and this. This disposes of the whole case, rendering it unnecessary to consider the statute of frauds in connection with it, or the doctrine of part performance, as taking a case out of the operation of that act. When such a case is fhirly presented, the views of the court upon the whole doctrine will be fully expressed. Now it is not necessary.

¶4The decree is affirmed.

¶5Decree affirmed.

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