Volume 250 — Iowa Reports

<bold>DESCENT AND DISTRIBUTION: Family settlement — equal sharing in</bold> 1 <bold>mother's estate — agreement established and enforced.</bold> In a suit to establish and enforce a family settlement agreement that the three children would share equally in the estate of their mother, evidenced by a written agreement signed by the children and an oral agreement of the mother that her children should so share her estate, trial court properly established both agreements as valid and binding, imposing a trust in favor of two of the children against the third who was claiming under a codicil in her favor executed after the agreements were made.<page_number>Page 266</page_number> <bold>DESCENT AND DISTRIBUTION: Oral family settlement — mother and</bold> 2 <bold>her children — statute of frauds not applicable.</bold> An oral contract between mother and son that he would share her estate equally with her two other children was not invalid under the statute of frauds because it involved rights in real estate, where the son immediately upon making the oral contract dismissed a suit he had commenced against his mother and it clearly appears the dismissal was referable exclusively to the oral and written phase of a family settlement agreement as to the disposition of the mother's estate. <bold>DESCENT AND DISTRIBUTION: Family settlement between mother</bold> 3 <bold>and her children — after acquired estate included.</bold> Where several years after a family settlement agreement that all three children should share equally in their mother's estate was made the mother acquired by devise additional moneys, the agreement applies not only to the estate possessed by the mother when made, but to the increase in her estate. <bold>DESCENT AND DISTRIBUTION: Family settlement — between mother</bold> 4 <bold>and children — mother under guardianship — validity of</bold> <bold>agreement.</bold> A family settlement agreement between a mother and her three children that her estate would be shared equally among them is not void because it was not formally approved by the guardianship court, where the mother's guardian had been appointed on her own application and there was no showing of unsoundness of mind or of her incompetency to make a testamentary instrument. Section <cross_reference>670.5</cross_reference>, Code of 1954.