Summary
In Crane v. Elizabeth, 36 N.J. Eq. 339, we said: "But if, in any special case, this owner ought not, in equity, to receive the fund, the Court of Chancery will, at the instance of any interested complainant, take charge of its proper distribution, and so secure those particular equities which the generality of the statute has left without express protection."
Summary of this case from State Highway Commission v. DeyOpinion
No. 9440N.
October 31, 2006.
Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Joan B. Lobis, J.), entered May 25, 2005, which, to the extent appealed from as limited by the briefs, denied defendant's cross motion for an order rescinding her 1999 transfer of title to a property in East Hampton, unanimously affirmed, without costs.
Before: Saxe, J.P., Sullivan, Williams, Gonzalez and Catterson, JJ.
Rescission of the subject property transfer is sought upon the ground that defendant was not paid for the transferred property interest in accordance with an alleged oral postnuptial agreement. The alleged oral agreement is said to have provided that plaintiff, in exchange for defendant's transfer of the property to the parties as tenants-in-common, would pay defendant half the price paid for the property by defendant. Such agreement would be barred by the statute of frauds (General Obligations Law § 5-703). Defendant has not shown that her transfer of the property was "unequivocally referable" to the alleged agreement so as to remove the agreement from the statute ( see Anostario v Vicinanzo, 59 NY2d 662, 664). Indeed, the record discloses numerous possible explanations for the transfer, among them that before the transfer of title, plaintiff paid defendant the net proceeds from the sale of a home he had owned separately.