Simmons v. Macomber

Citations

• 60 Wash. 469
• 111 P. 579
• 1910 Wash. LEXIS 1074

Syllabus

<p>Cancellation oe Instruments — Deeds — Mutual Mistake — Estoppel. Where a father, after conveying a life estate, deeded the reversion in consideration of an agreement that the grantees should care for and educate his three infant children until they became eighteen years of age, and the grantees failed to care for the children, but allowed the life tenants to perform the consideration and treat the land as their own for sixteen years, and then agreed to and participated in a different testamentary disposition of the property by the life tenants, they cannot claim a mutual mistake and want of consideration in agreeing to such testamentary disposition because of representations by the life tenants to the effect that the first deed conveying a life estate was lost and that the life tenants had since acquired the fee simple title.</p> <p>Wills — Testamentary Disposition — Deeds — Construction. Where old people called their children together and the parties agreed upon a division of the real property, deeded to the children with a life estate reserved, the deeds being delivered to the county auditor to be recorded after the grantors’ deaths, and, at the same time, the grantees in one of the deeds made a deed of a certain tract to three grandchildren of the old people, at their request, containing a proviso “that this deed shall be void and of no effect until our death,” the transaction amounts to a testamentary disposition by the old people, and not by the grantors in the last deed.</p> <p>Wills — Testamentary Disposition — Deeds—Recall. A change in the custody of such deeds, from the county auditor to a son of the grantors, does not amount to a recall of the deeds.</p> <p>Deeds — Delivery. The delivery of the last mentioned deed in favor of the grandchildren to the grandparents, at whose request it was made, is in effect a delivery to the grandchildren.</p> <p>Cancellation of Instruments — -Actions—Dismissal — Effect — Quieting Title. The dismissal, on the merits, of