Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 1.djvu/195

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services of the complainant in White v. Sheldon, for the trust results at the time of the grant. Strictly speaking, equity “creates” or raises the trust at the time of the grant, then the Court will enforce the trust so created or raised after the cestui que trust has made his payment. It is true that the transaction is treated as one; but this is not a reason for confusing the acts, the actual diversity of which is the very occasion for the exercise of the Court’s authority. The value of treating the transaction as one does not fully appear without this analysis.

The cases concerning notes which have been alluded to are stated below. It is unnecessary here to take the distinction between the cases where notes are themselves payment, and where they are not, for in either event the views here suggested are applicable. Whether a note be strictly payment, or not, it may be loaned and may be given as the consideration of a grant.

In Dudley v. Bachelder[1] the Court overruled a demurrer to a bill alleging an agreement by which money and notes were advanced as a loan to the complainant in the purchase of property taken in the name of the lender but for his benefit, and put the correct rule as follows: “If, then, the purchase-money paid and the notes given for the lands conveyed to P were the money and notes of P, loaned to this complainant, he having at the time given his notes therefor, or having by some valid contract agreed to repay the money advanced and interest, and to take up the notes thus given at their maturity, and take a deed of the land, then there would arise a resulting trust in his favor. Whether the evidence will establish such a trust is a matter to be determined upon the hearing of the cause.”

In Cramer v. Hoose[2] one paid a third of the purchase-money for land, and his father who attended to the matter for him gave his own notes for the balance. Afterwards the father paid his own notes so given, but the payments were made in pursuance of a contract with the son by which the son was entitled to have such payments made for his benefit. It was held that a trust resulted in favor of the son. Thus the notes were treated, like the original purchase-money in Runnels v. Jackson, as loans to the son, and the payments on the notes were equivalent to payments of the loans. The Court said, “Being paid in pursuance of such a contract, such payments have the same legal effect as if the money had been paid to (the son) by his father, and he had paid it to the holders of the notes.”


  1. 53 Maine, 403 (1866).
  2. 93 Ill. 503 (1879).