Laughlin v. Laughlin

Citations

• 219 Pa. 629
• 69 A. 288
• 1908 Pa. LEXIS 639

Syllabus

<p>Trust and trustees — Husband and wife — Wife’s property in husband’s name — Evidence—Laches.</p> <p>Where a wife claims as her own, securities standing in the name of her deceased husband, she cannot establish a trust in such securities for herself as against her husband’s creditors, unless she shows by clear and satisfactory evidence that when they were purchased by him, she had a separate estate, that it was used by him in purchasing them, and that he purchased them for her. In such a case witnesses for the wife may testify as to what the husband had stated to them as to his trusteeship for his wife, and what he actually did and wanted done in connection with his management of her estate.</p> <p>A wife cannot be charged with laches in delaying for eleven months to file a bill in equity to have a trust declared in her favor as to certain securities standing in her husband's name, but claimed to have been bought with her money, where it appears that such securities, with others standing in her own name, were in a box to which she had the key, and in this box was a statement in the handwriting of her husband headed “ List of stocks and notes'' of the wife, naming her, and naming himself as “ trustee of ” the wife, and it also appears that the wife was old, blind, had been bedridden for years, and was of frail mind.</p>