Mr. and Mrs. Riddle purchased real estate and took title as joint tenants.
Before her death, Mrs. Riddle requested that the joint tenancy be terminated so that the property would not pass to her husband.
Her attorney prepared a grant deed whereby Mrs. R granted to herself an undivided one half interest in the subject property.
Also provided that "The purpose of this grant deed is to terminate those joint tenancies formerly existing between Mrs. R and her husband."
Mr. Riddle also prepared a will disposing of Mrs. R's interest in the property.
Mrs. R died.
Procedural History
Trial Court held that Mrs. Riddle did not terminate joint tenancy and quieted title to Mr. R.
Issues
Did Mrs. Riddle unilaterally terminate a joint tenancy by conveying her interest from herself as a joint tenant to herself as a tenant in common?
Is a straw man required to terminate a joint tenancy?
Holding/Rule
Mrs. Riddle can and did unilateral terminate her joint tenancy by conveying her interest to herself.
One joint tenant may unilateral sever the joint tenancy without the use of an intermediary device.
Reasoning
Common law required four unities essential to the creation of an existence of an estate in joint tenancy: interest, time, title and possession.
If one of these was destroyed, tenancy in common remained.
Severance of joint tenancy extinguishes the right of survivorship.
It is the indisputable right of the joint tenant to convey his or her separate estate by way of gift or otherwise without the knowledge or consent of the other joint tenant and to thereby terminate the joint tenancy.
Common law required unity of time (had to gain interest at the same time) in order to achieve joint tenancy, which required use of a straw man as the middle man to convert a property owned by one person to a joint tenancy owned by both.
CA has disregarded this application of the unities requirement.
CA allows creation of a joint tenancy by direct transfer.
In Clark v. Carter, the COA found the straw man to be indispensible.
Similar facts to the current case (wife granted tenancy in common to herself before husband's death).
COA found this insufficient to sever the joint tenancy, because you cannot convey property to yourself alone. There must be a grantor and a grantee.
The "two to transfer" notion stems from common law.
Ancient vestiges of old English ceremonies should give way to modern conveyance realities.
This led to attorneys finding methods to transfer in order to get around this rule.
One of these is the straw man method.
Another is a trust- person can transfer trustee ownership in land to someone else and designate him/her self as beneficiary.
Given these methods, it is stupid to continue to uphold the common law "two to transfer" notion which just leads to fictional conveyances.
Therefore, we reject the rationale of the Clark case because it rests on common law notions whose reasons for existence vanished a long time ago.
One joint tenant may unilateral sever the joint tenancy without the use of an intermediary device.
This does not create any new powers for the joint tenant.
If an indestructible right of survivorship is desired, that can be accomplished by creating a joint life estate with a contingent remainder in fee to the survivor, a tenancy in common in simple fee w/executory interest in the survivor, or a fee simple o take effect in possession in the future.
