Taylor v. Taylor, 49 U.S. (8 How.) 183 (1850)

A deed will not be set aside on the ground of fraud, unless it be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Phettiplace v. Sayles, 4 Mason, 312. A deed to a parent, by a child just come of age, is prima facie valid, and the burden of proving undue influence or fraud, is on the party attacking it. Sullivan v. Sullivan, 21 Law Rep., 531; Beehling v. Byers, 94 Pa. St., 316. In Hallett v. Collins, 10 How., 174, releases obtained for an inadequate consideration, from heirs just come of age, who were poor and ignorant of their rights, were set aside. In Miller v. Simonds, 5 Mo. App., 33, a gift of valuable property was made by a motherless girl of twenty-three, to her father who had been her guardian. The court set aside the deed, treating her legal term of disability as extended, on proof that her habits of submission to her father remained unchanged. In Thornton Ogden, 3 Vr. (N. J.), 723, a conveyance by an unmarried step-father—one, at the age of twenty-one, as surety for her step-father’s debt, and the other, at the age of twenty-nine, to secure the amount of a judgment recovered on the first bond,—were set aside as against her, on the ground that she had acted in the transaction without independent advice; one of the justices observing that the court had endeavored to prevent persons subject to influence from being induced to enter into transactions without advice of that kind. S. P. Davis v. Dunne, 46 Iowa, 684; Rankin v. Patton, 65 Mo., 378; Miller v. Simonds, 72 Mo., 669.