Copied from Lawyers Weekly Newspaper dated 1/20/2020 (This Week's Decisions Segment)
Where a defendant who co-owns real property with the plaintiff, her son-in-law, as tenants in common has contended that the plaintiff does not have a statutory right to a partition of the property, that contention should be rejected because the plaintiff does not hold his share of the property in a resulting trust for the defendant.
"This case concerns a property at 150 Grove Street in the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. Two lots, one that's registered land and the other not, make up 150 Grove Street. According to the certificate of title for the registered parcel and the record title of the unregistered parcel, 150 Grove Street's owners are plaintiff Joe Martinez and his mother-in-law, defendant Cenaida Herrera, as tenants-in-common. But land records don't always tell the full story. In this case, Ms. Herrera claims she owns all of 150 Grove Street, and that Mr. Martinez holds his half merely in a 'resulting trust' for Herrera. Herrera thus contends that Martinez doesn't have the right under M.G.L.c. 241, S1 et seq., as a normal tenant in-common would, to a court supervised partition of 150 Grove Street...
"The sole issue tried is whether Mr. Martinez is holding his share of 150 Grove Street in a 'resulting trust' for Ms. Herrera. 'A resulting trust in real estate arises where one party furnishes the consideration to purchase property, not intending a gift or advancement, yet title is taken in the name of another'....The doctrine rests on the assumption that, 'in the absence of anything to show the contrary, (the person) who supplies the purchase price intends that the property bought shall inure to his own benefit and not that of another, and that the conveyance is taken in the name of another for some incidental reason.'...
"It's the burden of the party who claims a resulting trust to 'prove that (she) furnished (herself) the entire consideration or a specific and definite part thereof, for which it was intended (she) should receive a determinate and fixed fraction of the whole estate converyed,' and that 'it was not intended at the time of the conveyance that (the other party holding title) should take a beneficial interest in the property by way of gift, settlement or advancement.' ...Ms. Herrera easily passes the second of these tests: it's undisputed that she and the Martinezes never discussed the issue of who would own what percentages of 150 Grove Street, and she had no intent to gift Mr. Martinez an interest in the property.
"Ms. Herrera has a harder time with the first prong of the test. It's true that she furnished the entire down payment for 150 Grove Street and paid all closing costs. But that amount ($107,270.15) wasn't the entire consideration for 150 Grove Street: $491,270.15 was due at closing, and $384.000 of that came from Citibank, as the proceeds of a note she and Mr. Martinez willingly agreed to co-sign. In the absence of a further agreement by Herrera to pay Martinez's share of the Citibank mortgage, or to reimburse him for his mortgage payments, or to indemnify him in the event of any loss under the mortgage, Massachusetts law deems Martinez (by having co-signed the Citibank note and mortgage) to hae provided some of the consideration for 150 Grove Street.
"Where does that leave Ms. Herrera? The Supreme Judicial Court has looked to the restatement (third) of trusts (2003) and the Restatement (second) of Trusts (1959) for guidance on resulting-trust issues. ...Under both Restatements, it's presumed that parties own property that's subject to a resulting trust in proportion to each owner's contribution towards acquiring it...That means that Ms. Herrera owns a share of 150 Grove Street that acknowledges her cash contribution to the purchase ($107,270.15) plus her agreement to be a co-borrower on the Citibank loan (equal to one half of the loan, $192,000).That totals $292,270.15. Dividing that number by 150 Grove Street's purchase price ($149,270.15) gives Ms. Herrera, under Masachusetts law, a 60.9% share of the property at the time of its purchase. Mr. Martinez owns the remaining 39.1%.
