Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

190 Ill. 197

Euans v. Curtis

Illinois Supreme Court

Decided April 18, 1901

Illinois Supreme Court · decided 1901-04-18

John Small, Judge, presiding. Appellees James Curtis, and Celia, his wife, on September 1, 1899, in consideration of the sum of $125, conveyed lot 7, in block 5, railroad addition to the village of M'ilford, in Iroquois county, to the appellee Wilbur J. Prose, who is a son of the appellant. Said sum of $125, the consideration for the deed, was paid by appellant out of her own moneys. The deed was not placed of record.

Relies on Pool v. Phillips

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1901-04-18

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently March 1947

4 state decisions

2019011910192019301940decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Mr. Chief Justice Boggs

¶1delivered the opinion of the court:

¶2Counsel for the appellant, in their brief, say the appellant is not asking to recover on a verbal express trust, but upon a resulting trust. When a parent pays the purchase price of real estate and directs the title to be made to his or her child, the presumption which arises in law is, that an advancement or gift to the child is intended. (Taylor v. Taylor, 4 Gilm. 303; Pool v. Phillips, 167 Ill. 432; 1 Am. & Eng. Ency. of Law,-2d. ed.-p. 769.) In such state of case a resulting trust can only be established by clear and satisfactory proof that neither an advancement nor a gift was intended. (Pool v. Phillips, supra.). The presumption is the same whether the parent be the father or the mother. (1 Am. & Eng. Ency. of Law,-2d ed.-p. 773, and note 2.)

¶3The only testimony relied upon to overturn this legal presumption is that of the appellant. Her testimony, in substance, was, she and her husband kept a hotel; that Prose was her son by a former husband and lived in her family; that she had a conversation with appellee Curtis about purchasing the lot; that he offered to sell it to her for §125, but she told him she would talk to her son before purchasing; that she had a talk with her son, q,nd asked him if she would buy the ground if he would help improve it; that he said he would assist, but wanted it so it would be his; that his brother had plenty of property and ought not to come in on this lot; that she agreed to have the deed drawn in his name if he would help improve it; that she thought he was the one to have it; that she intended to give him the property if he would help improve it. She also testified she wanted the lot for a home, and that she agreed to have the title conveyed to her son for the reason he had “agreed to help her improve it,” and that she told him that the lot was not his until “he did that.” What improvements she intended or desired to have put upon the lot, and to what extent she expected her son to assist therein in order the gift might become irrevocable, is not disclosed. It is clear she intended that the lot should belong to him unless she revoked the gift for non-performance on his part of the verbal understanding between them.

¶4In the view most favorable to be taken for the appellant, all that can be deduced from this testimony is, that the transaction, as between the mother and son, was a gift to the son, which might be subsequently revoked by, her should the son fail to fulfill the conditions of a verbal agreement between them requiring the performance of some act or acts by the son in the future. The testimony is not only insufficient to overturn the leg'al presumption of a gift or an advancement, but tends rather to add confirmation to the presumption that a gift was intended. The plea of the Statute of Frauds presented an insurmountable barrier to the establishment of an express trust by verbal testimony.

¶5The decree is affirmed.

¶6r, „ , Decree affirmed.

/190/ill/197 · .json · Public domain