Dunbar's Estate

Citations

• 51 Pa. Super. 216
• 1912 Pa. Super. LEXIS 206

Syllabus

<p>Equity — Specific performance — Decedents’ estates — Change of circumstances.</p> <p>1. Where a daughter, in anticipation of confinement agrees in writing to sell her real estate to her father for an amount reasonably equal to the value of the land, and the father agrees to pay the purchase money in installments, a small portion of which is stated to be for the expenses of the confinement, the agreement is to be construed as an agreement of sale, and not as a mortgage; and upon the subsequent death of the daughter and her child in the confinement, her husband, as administrator, may force the father to specifically perform the contract; and it is no defense that the husband may have failed to support his wife or to contribute to her necessities, or that the contract of sale changed the course of descent so as to defeat the expectations of the daughter’s collateral heirs. The law will presume that such matters were within the contemplation of the parties when the contract was made.</p> <p>2. The happening of subsequent events which may reasonably be supposed to have been in contemplation of. the parties to a contract as possible to happen, is not a defense in a suit to enforce the specific performance of a contract.</p> <p>3. In such a case the petitioning administrator cannot be charged with laches, if it appears that he filed his petition within a year and a hah after the decedent’s death, and no circumstances are alleged from which it could be inferred that anyone suffered or could have suffered by the delay.</p> <p>4. An application for specific performance is addressed to the discretion of the court, and is not in all eases to bé granted, even though there may be no defense at law; but this discretion is not an arbitrary discretion regulated solely by considerations of pure benevolence, but a sound judicial discretion, regulated by established principles of equity.</p>