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99 Ky. 271

Swearingen v. Abbott

Court of Appeals of Kentucky

Decided May 19, 1896

Court of Appeals of Kentucky · decided 1896-05-19

Case 48 — PETITION EQUITY APPEAL FROM JEFFERSON CIRCUIT COURT, CHANCERY DIVISION. 1. Section 490 of the Civil Code requires that the estate owned by the infant in such notions as this must not only be a vested one, but “in possession,” and without that the court had no jurisdiction to order the sale.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1896-05-19

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently July 1957

4 state decisions

201896190019101920193019401950decided

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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CHIEF JUSTICE PRYOR

¶1delivered the opinion of the coubt.

¶2While it is manifest the property in this case is indivisible. and perhaps it is to the interest of the infants that it should be sold, still the proceedings do not follow the provisions of the Code authorizing the sale of infant’s real estate.

¶3It is true the owner of three-fourths of the realty consents to the sale, and the life tenant by cross petition is seeking to subject the realty to the satisfaction of a lien, yet the infants by their next friend could not bring the action because they were not in possession, and although with a vested estate the possession is with the life1 tenant and the other joint owner. (Malone v. Conn., 95 Ky., 93.)

¶4This is not a sale for debt within section 489 of the Code, or a proceeding under 491, but an attempt to sell under 490, because the estate was vested in the infants. Whether or not the title passed by reason of the cross petition of the father is a question of doubt; but the purchaser is complaining, and it is not only proper but essential that these statutes regulating the sale of infants’ realty should be complied with. If the father has a lien, let him enforce it; or, if the joint tenant wants it sold, let her bring the *273action, and not by the next friend of the infants without an averment bringing the case within either of the sections, of the Code under which the realty of infants can be sold..

¶5Section 490 not only requires that the estate should be vested, but the possession must be with the infants. Here' they have no right to enter because of the life estate in .the father.

¶6Reversed and remanded, with directions to set aside the sale and dismiss the petition.

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