Cartwright v. Hollis

5 Tex. 152
CourtTexas Supreme Court
DecidedDecember 15, 1849
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 5 Tex. 152 (Cartwright v. Hollis) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Texas Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Cartwright v. Hollis, 5 Tex. 152 (Tex. 1849).

Opinion

Hemphill, Ch. J.

The appellant in his brief states that the question presented by the record or the one intended to be settled by the appeal is "whether a married woman can contract by the execution of a promissory note jointly with her husband, so as to make her separate property liable to the credit or by a proceeding in rem for that purpose, the husband having no community or separate property from which the debt can be enforced.” The question is one of considerable importance, and has been elucidated in a logical and elaborate argument of the counsel in support of the affirmative of the position.

In the investigation I shall not, at least at any length, advert to the powers or disabilities of the wife under the Spanish system of jurisprudence in relation to her separate property. The argument has proceeded on the supposition that the powers and consequent liabilities of the wife in the case under consideration are to be determined by the rules of the common law as modified by the principles of equity and the statutory provisions on the subject of marital rights. At common law the husband and wife are identified and treated as one person. The legal existence of the wife as a distinct person is suspended or incorporated in that of her husband, under whose protection and cover she performs everything. By the marriage all her rights to personal property vest in him absolutely, and a freehold estate in her realty continuing during their joint lives, and by possibility during his life, should he survive; and the wife is incapable of contracting or acting as a feme sole, and of suing or being sued as such. (1 Bl. Comm., 443; 2 Story Eq., sec. 1367; 8 T. R., 547; Roper on Husband and Wife, 2 vol., 119.) The husband could not grant anything to the wife or enter into covenant with her, for that would admit her distinct separate existence; nor could she bind him by any contract or incur any debt without his consent, with certain exceptions, in which there was a legal implication of her authority to act as his agent and of his liability to pay for necessaries. (2 Roper, 111.)

But in equity the wife’s individuality was acknowledged, and her capacity to hold a separate estate with the incidental power of control, management, and disposal recognized; but in relation to the extent of her power, or rather the mode of its exercise, there has been a considerable diversity of opinion. The decisions of the English courts on the subject were for a long time wavering and unsettled; but it seems now to be established law that a wife who has an absolute interest in or power over her separate estate can dispose of it in any manner capable of transferring it; that her power of disposition is incidental to the estate she holds in the property, and she can dispose of it in the same manner and to the same extent as a feme sole. (2 Story Eq., sec. 1390; 2 Roper, 177-198.)

I shall not attempt to travel through the numerous authorities in which the power of femes covert to charge or dispose of estates limited to their separate use lias been discussed. They have doubtless been frequently canvassed, and were critically and elaborately reviewed by Chancellor Kent, hi the Methodist Episcopal Church v. Jacques, (3 Johns. Ch. R., 78,) and by Chancellor Dessaussure in Ewing v. Smith. (3 Dess. R., 477.) In the former ease the Chancellor, after a most laborious examination of the cases for nearly a century, was of opinion that the decisions were so floating and contradictory as to leave him at liberty” to adoiit the true principle, viz, that a feme covert was not, as to her separate property, to be deemed a, feme sole, but only a. feme sole sub modo, or to the extent of the power clearly given by the deed of settlement. That instead of the wife having an absolute power of disposition, unless specially restrained by the instrument creating her estate, the converse of the proposition would be more correct, viz, that she has no power except what is specially [79]*79given, and to be exercised only in the mode which is proscribed. That her incapacity was general, and the exception was to be taken strictly and shown in every casi', because it is against the general policy and immemorial doctrine of tlie law. &a.

Tile case was reviewed in the Court of Errors, and the principle regarded by the chancellor as the true one was not sustained. It was declared that a fame covert, in regard to her separate property, was to be regarded in equity as a fame sole, and might dispose of it without the assent and concurrence of the trustee, unless specially restrained by the instrument under which she acquired her separate estate, and that though a particular mode of disposition wits specifically pointed out in the deed of settlement, it would not preclude the wife from adopting any other mode unless specially restrained by tile deed of settlement to the adoption of a particular mode. (17 Johns. R., 548; 2 Kent Comm., 166.) In Vanderheiden v. Mallory (1 Comstock R., 462) it was held that as a consequence of the established principle that a married woman may take and enjoy property to her separate use, courts of equity enable her to deal with it as a feme sole. The right of disposition or appointment is an incident belonging to such interest and power. She may sell, pledge, or incumber her separate estate, when she shows an intention so to dispose of it, in the same manner as if she were a feme sole, unless specially restrained by the instrument under which she acquires it; and every security thereon executed by her is to be deemed an appointment pro tanto of the separate estate.” (22 Wend. R., 526.)

Chancellor Dessaussure, after tracing the doctrine in relation to the power of femes covert over their separate estates through all the eases from its first appearance in courts of equity, held, as the result of the examination, that under the authority of adjudged eases a feme covert entitled to a separate estate must be regarded as a feme sole to the extent of her separate property, and that the jus disponendi followed as a necessary incident; that she could give it to whom she pleased or charge it with tire debts of her husband, where no undue control was used over her, and her disposition will be enforced and sanctioned by the courts, even without the assent of trustees, unless that assent he specially made necessary by the deed or will creating the estate; and this power of disposal is not restricted by the deed or will pointing out a particular mode of charging or disposing the particular estate, unless any other mode is expressly negatived. On appeal it was held that the doctrines, as deduced by the chancellor from the English cases, were supported by the decisions, hut that the court was not compelled, in applying principles to cases as they occur, to implicitly follow the construction given to them in similar cases by the judge of a foreign court, and obey his decisions as verba magistri; that the question should he regarded as res integra in that Slate; that the decisions were contradictory, and that the safer principle to be established was that a married woman cannot part with her separate estate or charge it in any way without an examination; that by marriage she loses all the powers of a feme sole; that a separate estate does not confer all those powers, and therefore the power of appointing such estate must be expressly given and the prescribed mode be strictly pursued. (Ewing v.

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Bluebook (online)
5 Tex. 152, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/cartwright-v-hollis-tex-1849.