Roberts v. Morin, 198 Mont. 233, 645 P.2d 423 (1982)
Legal information, not legal advice. Verify against the cited opinion.
- Citation: 198 Mont. 233, 645 P.2d 423 (1982) (docket No. 81-448; decided May 13, 1982). Reporter pages confirmed against a second independent database; an earlier draft “645 P.2d 1026” was an OCR misread and has been corrected.
- Court / Year: Supreme Court of Montana, 1982.
- Topic tags: forfeiture, remedies, equitable_interest
- Facts: Buyers under a contract for deed defaulted but had paid down principal and made substantial improvements (improvements valued at about 9,500 (1974) to roughly $23,000 (1982). The seller sought to enforce forfeiture.
- Holding: The Montana Supreme Court reversed the District Court (which had ruled for the seller Morin and awarded her the property) and granted the defaulting buyers relief from forfeiture, remanding for entry of judgment letting the buyers cure by paying the full balance of the original contract. Enforcing forfeiture would let the seller recover the property at its greatly increased value plus the benefit of the buyers’ improvements — an unjust enrichment the court would not sanction where the equities favored the buyer. (Procedural posture: buyers Stanley and Donna Roberts were plaintiffs/appellants seeking relief from forfeiture or damages; seller Mary Jane Morin was defendant/respondent. Appeal from the Fourth Judicial District, Missoula County.)
- Reasoning: Applying Montana’s anti-forfeiture statute (then § 17-102, R.C.M. 1947; now § 28-1-104, MCA), the Court balanced the buyer’s equitable interest built through partial payment and improvements against the seller’s right to enforce the contract, requiring that any relief fully compensate the seller while preventing a windfall. The disparity between the unpaid balance and the appreciated value (plus improvements) was a central equitable factor weighing against forfeiture.
- Practical impact for CFD operators/buyers: A leading Montana illustration that forfeiture of a contract for deed is not automatic — where the buyer has built substantial equity (principal paid + improvements + appreciation), a court sitting in equity can relieve the forfeiture under § 28-1-104 to avoid the seller’s unjust enrichment, conditioned on the buyer making full compensation. Montana’s functional analogue to the skendzel-v-marshall-1973 substantial-equity principle, reached through the relief-from-forfeiture statute rather than mandatory mortgage foreclosure.
- Good-law status: Good law; routinely cited in Montana forfeiture-relief analysis (e.g., weter-v-archambault-2002).
- Source (retrieved): Full slip opinion (No. 81-448, Daly, J.; decided May 13, 1982) read and verified page-by-page this run via Justia opinion PDF, https://cases.justia.com/montana/supreme-court/1982-05-13-DFFD3035-348F-4DEE-BC8A-35FECEC690CD.pdf ; citation corroborated against CourtListener (Montana Supreme Court database). The opinion confirms: improvements valued at 9,500 (1974) → $23,000 (1977); § 28-1-104, MCA applied; Parrott v. Heller and Yellowstone County v. Wight cited; District Court reversed. · Verified: 2026-06-10
Jurisdictions that follow / cite: montana
Disclaimer. Legal information, not legal advice. Confirm the opinion is still good law before relying on it.