Estate of Harris

72 P.2d 873, 9 Cal. 2d 649, 1937 Cal. LEXIS 442
CourtCalifornia Supreme Court
DecidedOctober 6, 1937
DocketL. A. 15911
StatusPublished
Cited by73 cases

This text of 72 P.2d 873 (Estate of Harris) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering California Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Estate of Harris, 72 P.2d 873, 9 Cal. 2d 649, 1937 Cal. LEXIS 442 (Cal. 1937).

Opinion

CURTIS, J.

This is an appeal from a decree of distribution distributing to the respondents, the two brothers and a sister of Maria L. Harris, the entire estate of said decedent who died intestate without issue. The appellant is a brother of Richard T. Harris, the previously deceased husband of Maria L. Harris, who in behalf of himself, other brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews and the wives of deceased brothers, seeks to share in the deceased wife’s estate, appraised at $74,246.98.

Objection to the distribution of all of the property in the estate of Marie L. Harris, hereinafter referred to as decedent, to her relatives, was made by appellant upon the ground that all of the property inventoried in the estate of decedent, with the exception of two small parcels, came to the decedent by an inter vivos gift to her from her husband of his separate property, and that these two parcels came to her by *653 operation of law upon the death of her prior deceased husband by virtue of the fact that they had been the community property of said spouses. Appellant claims by virtue of sections 228 and 229 of the Probate Code to be entitled to have distributed to the relatives of said R. T. Harris, designated in said code sections, all of the separate property of said previously deceased spouse remaining in the estate of decedent which came to decedent by gift from her husband during his lifetime, and one-half of the property remaining in her estate which had been the community property of said spouses.

In order to understand the arguments advanced relative to the applicability of said code sections to the property inventoried in the estate of decedent, Maria L. Harris, a brief resume of the proceedings taken in the probate of the estate of R. T. Harris is necessary. Upon the death intestate and without issue of R. T. Harris in 1911, after twenty-three years of married life with Maria L. Harris, his surviving widow, as administratrix of his estate, returned in the inventory and appraisement of his estate, no personal property and only one parcel of real property valued at $5,000, which had been purchased by him a few days before his death and held in his name as sole grantee, which real property she declared to be community property. Although at the time of his death, R. T. Harris apparently owned an estate of considerable magnitude, consisting of real and personal property, with the exception of the above mentioned real property, none of it was included in the inventory of his estate. The reason for this omission was that for several years the funds of Harris and his wife had been kept in a joint tenancy bank account, and the bulk of the real property purchased by Harris during their married life was taken by him as sole grantee, and by him deeded to his wife, which deeds were recorded by her after his death. One piece of real property, included in the inventory as parcel No. 3, and known as the Home Place, which had been acquired early in their married life, had been deeded to Maria L. Harris as sole grantee by the grantor thereof, and another piece of real property had been taken in the name of R. T. Harris and Maria L Harris as joint tenants. Maria L. Harris, therefore, claimed all of the property with the exception of the $5,000 piece of real property, as her own property, and omitted it from the inventory of his estate. During the course of the probate, the parcel of real property was sold to one Orookshank for $5,000, and the whole *654 purchase price applied by the administratrix to the satisfaction of the debts of R. T. Harris, which came to slightly more than $5,000. Objections to the final account of said administratrix were made by Clara G. Fulsom, a sister of R. T. Harris, solely upon the ground that said administratrix had failed to account for certain personal property of the approximate value of $40,000, part of which consisted of shares of stock, the certificates to which had been issued to. R. T. Harris, and by him endorsed and placed in the safe-deposit box in which was kept the property of both spouses. • The probate court in that proceeding found that the property described in the objections was the property of Maria L. Harris, and not the property of the estate of R. T. Harris, that nothing remained in the' estate to be distributed, and approved said final account. Upon appeal, this court after stating that said spouses at the time of their marriage each had separate property and had established a joint bank account with the right of survivorship in pursuance of an agreement between them during the early years of their marriage, which provided that all property held or acquired by either or both of them during the marriage, should be held in joint ownership as joint tenants, and that they had deposited the money received from earnings, proceeds of property, and all other sources by either of them in accordance with said agreement, and that all the property in controversy had been acquired with money from this joint account, held that the property acquired with funds from this joint tenancy account, in the absence of an agreement between the parties that the character was changed, retained the character of joint property, the same as the money with which it was obtained and therefore belonged to the widow as the survivor. (Estate of Harris, 169 Cal. 725 [147 Pac. 967].) The court reached this conclusion upon the reasoning that as there was no statutory prohibition against the transfer of personal property by oral agreement, the agreement of the spouses to hold their property in joint tenancy operated to create a joint tenancy in the personal property acquired by them, notwithstanding the fact that the purchase price had actually been withdrawn from the joint tenancy account and that, as to certain of the personal property, the title on its face stood in the name of only one of the joint tenants. By this decision the court laid down the rule that joint tenancy property may be traced into personal *655 property and the personal property so acquired with joint tenancy funds will be deemed to be held in joint tenancy, in the absence of an agreement to the contrary, regardless of the circumstance that title to said acquired property may be held by only one of the joint tenants. Although this conclusion that where personal property is purchased with joint tenancy funds and title is placed in the name of one of the cotenants, the joint tenancy is not terminated, despite the destruction of one of the necessary unities, namely, unity of title, appears to be contrary to the common law rule, nevertheless, this exception to the common law rule, which had its origin in Estate of Harris, supra, has become the recognized and established law of this state, and has been followed in numerous recent decisions. (Lagar v. Erickson, 13 Cal. App. (2d) 365 [56 Pac. (2d) 1287]; Estate of McCoin, 9 Cal. App. (2d) 480 [50 Pac. (2d) 114]; In re Kesler, 217 Cal. 32 [17 Pac. (2d) 117]; Young v. Young, 126 Cal. App. 306 [14 Pac. (2d) 580].) It should be noted here, perhaps, that the decision upon that appeal only dealt with the personal property alleged to have been omitted from the inventory of the estate of R T. Harris, and did not purport to deal with any real property.

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Bluebook (online)
72 P.2d 873, 9 Cal. 2d 649, 1937 Cal. LEXIS 442, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/estate-of-harris-cal-1937.