Butler v. Butler

212 So. 2d 213, 1968 La. App. LEXIS 4820
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedJune 4, 1968
DocketNo. 11026
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 212 So. 2d 213 (Butler v. Butler) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Butler v. Butler, 212 So. 2d 213, 1968 La. App. LEXIS 4820 (La. Ct. App. 1968).

Opinion

AYRES, Judge.

This is an action for a partition by licita-ción of a described 40-acre tract of land wherein it is alleged plaintiffs and defendants own the tract in various denominated fractional interests. Defendants, Mrs. Pearl Butler Camp, Raymond E. Butler, and Mrs. Nerrine Butler Bumgardner, assert ownership of the property (1) by deed from George Washington Butler and Mrs. Tennessee Viola Butler to Floyd E. Butler, now deceased but formerly husband of Mrs. Camp, with whom he then lived in community, and father of their children, Raymond E. Butler and Mrs. Nerrine Butler Bumgardner, and (2) by prescription of 10 and 30 years. Defendants additionally plead estoppel against plaintiffs’ assertion of any interest in the property.

From a judgment decreeing the property to be owned in indivisión by plaintiffs and defendants and ordering it sold to effect a partition, defendants prosecute this appeal.

Defendants assign as error the action of the trial court in failing to sustain any of the defenses urged and particularly by holding in effect that a sale by an heir of “succession rights” conveys to the purchaser property previously alienated by the vendors’ ancestors, and that the heirs and assigns are not affected by their ancestors’ unrecorded act of sale.

Plaintiffs, H. E. Butler and Vera Butler, are the children and sole heirs of Ivy Earl Butler who died November 28, 1965. Mrs. Pearl Butler Camp was the surviving wid-of of Floyd E. Butler who died December 13, 1927, leaving three children of their marriage, namely: Raymond E. Butler, Mrs. Nerrine Butler Bumgardner, and Eve Eloise Butler Mashaws. The latter died in 1943 without issue, leaving, as her sole heirs, her mother, brother, and sister.

Ivy Earl Butler and Floyd E. Butler were two of the seventeen children of George Washington Butler who died January 3, 1922, and Mrs. Tennessee Viola Butler who died March 27, 1926. Eight of the children died without issue and only one now survives, namely, Mrs. Ennie Lucille Butler Lyons, who disclaimed any interest in the property involved and was dismissed as a party to this suit.

Defendants Raymond E. Butler and Mrs. Nerrine Butler Bumgardner accepted the succession of their father as well as that of their grandparents, and plaintiffs accepted the succession of their father who had previously accepted the succession of his parents, plaintiffs’ grandparents.

[215]*215The record reflects these additional facts: On February 8, 1919, George Washington Butler and Mrs. Tennessee Viola Butler sold and delivered to Floyd E. Butler, husband of Mrs. Pearl Butler, with whom he, as heretofore stated, was living in community, the property with which we are now concerned. This deed, however, was not filed for record until April 2, 1931. In the meantime, during 1926 and 1927, plaintiff H. E. Butler acquired, from some of the heirs, various interests in his grandparents’ succession, which interests were generally described in the various instruments, with slight variations in the language employed, as:

“All of the Appearer’s right, title and interest in and to all property, both real and personal, belonging to the succession of George W. Butler and Mrs. Tennessee V. Butler, deceased, the intention herein being to convey unto the said H. E. Butler each and every interest of every nature and kind whatsoever inherited by the said appearer in the property, both real and personal, of the above succession.”

Plaintiffs’ theory of the case is that the deed from George Washington Butler and Mrs. Tennessee Viola Butler to Floyd E. Butler was subject to the various aliena-tions of interests made in their successions by the heirs thereto to plaintiff H. E. Butler and whose recordations primed that of the deed. It may be noted that no attack whatever is made upon the deed itself.

The instruments by which plaintiff H. E. Butler acquired the interests in his grandparents’ succession were corrected and reformed by judgment dated May 17, 1956, in a proceeding to which defendants were not made parties. At the time, the deed of Floyd E. Butler had been of record for more than 25 years.

When one purchases succession rights, he acquires only such things as belong to the succession. Each of the seven purported conveyances executed during the period following the deaths of George Washington Butler and of Mrs. Tennessee Viola Butler and prior to the recordation of the deed to Floyd E. Butler conveyed only “succession rights.” Consequently, the property theretofore conveyed to Floyd E. Butler could not form a part of their successions. This principle is recognized in LSA-C.C. Art. 2513 which provides:

“But if the thing sold be succession rights, the eviction which the buyer might suffer from any particular thing found among the property of the succession, does not give rise to the warranty, because in this case the thing sold is only the succession right, which includes only such things as belong really to the succession.” (Emphasis supplied.)

That the deed was not timely filed for record is of no consequence for the lack of registry of a sale of immovable property cannot be pleaded between the parties, their heirs or assigns. LSA-C.C. Art. 2442; Porterfield v. Parker, 189 La. 720, 180 So. 498 (1938); Hardy v. Pecot, 113 La. 350, 36 So. 992, 996 (1904); Haggard v. Rushing, 76 So.2d 52 (La.App., 2d Cir. 1954).

Heirs who have accepted a succession are bound by the same warranties and obligations as their ancestor and are thereby estopped from claiming property to which the ancestor is bound in warranty to another. Those who sold their interests in the successions to plaintiff accepted the successions, for it is declared that:

“All those acts of ownership, which the person called to the succession can only do in quality of heir, suppose necessarily his acceptance, for to act as owner is to make himself heir.” LSA-C.C. Art. 994.

And:

“The donation, sale or assignment, which one of the coheirs makes of rights of inheritance, either to a stranger or to his coheirs, is considered to be, on his part, an acceptance of the inheritance.” LSA-C.C. Art. 1002.

[216]*216The theory that an heir is bound as his ancestor, with respect to warranty, is predicated upon specific provisions of the Revised Civil Code. For instance, it is declared in LSA-C.C. Art. 1013:

“The effect of the simple acceptance of the succession, whether express or tacit, is such, that when made by an heir of age, it binds him to the payment of all debts of the succession, not only out of the effects which have fallen to him from the succession, but even personally, and out of his own property, as if he had himself contracted the debts or as if he was the deceased himself; unless, before acting as heir, he make a true and faithful inventory of the effects of the succession, as here above established, or has taken the benefit treated of hereafter”;

and in LSA-C.C. Art. 1423:

“The heirs by the fact alone of the simple acceptance of a succession left them, contract the obligation to discharge all the debts of such succession, to whatever sum they may amount, though they far exceed the value of the effects composing it”;

and in LSA-C.C. Art. 2008:

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Related

Butler v. Butler
214 So. 2d 548 (Supreme Court of Louisiana, 1968)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
212 So. 2d 213, 1968 La. App. LEXIS 4820, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/butler-v-butler-lactapp-1968.