Evans v. Kilgore

Citations

• 147 Pa. 19
• 23 A. 201
• 1892 Pa. LEXIS 778

Syllabus

<p>Sheriff’s interpleader — Claim by wife — Jfi-aud—Charge to jury.</p> <p>On an issue, under a sheriff’s interpleader, the goods were claimed by the wife of the execution defendant, under a trust deed from the purchasers at a sheriff’s sale thereof under judgments against her husband, one of which was in her favor, the trust being to pay the grantor’s claims and apply the balance in support of her family: Held:</p> <p>1. To defeat the claimant it was necessary to show, either that the. grantors in the trust deed did not acquire a good title under the sheriff’s sale, or that the instrument transferring their title to the claimant was fraudulent, and intended by the grantors to hinder and delay the then existing creditors of the claimant’s husband.*</p> <p>2. The validity of the claimant’s judgment being in no way involved in the issue, and an inquiry into its consideration irrelevant, it was error to charge that to succeed it was necessary “ for the wife to establish that the judgment was given to her, bona fide, to secure a debt due to her by her husband, being a part of her separate estate.”</p> <p>3. So, an instruction that if the grantors “had no other purpose in view ” than the collection of their claims, yet if they permitted their judgments and executions to be used to aid the execution defendant to transfer his property to his wife, with intent thereby to defraud his creditors, the verdict should be against the claimant, was error.</p> <p>4. Such instruction was misleading. If the grantors, in the sale and purchase of the goods had no other purpose in view than the collection of their own claims, they could not have been inspired by another and fraudulent purpose; and, with such bona fide'purpose in view, neither they nor their grantee could be affected by an undisclosed intent of the defendant.</p>