Heidenheimer Bros. v. Stewart

65 Tex. 321, 1886 Tex. LEXIS 660

• Court: Texas Supreme Court
• Decided: January 22, 1886
• Docket: Case No. 2134
• Status: Published

Opinion

Robertson, Associate Justice.

The equities between the original parties to a mortgage cannot avail a mortgagor in a suit on the secured negotiable note to foreclose the mortgage (Jones on Mortgages, sec. 834; Hilliard on Mortgages, 572), even if it results in the encumbrance of the homestead, if those entitled to the exemption have caused this result by their own deliberate fraud. Hurt v. Cooper, 63 Tex. 362. If the owners of the homestead simulate a transaction, in which a negotiable note would be secured by a valid and meritorious lien on the exempt estate, and their artifice succeeds in imposing upon an innocent party, they are estopped from denying the truth of their solemn statements, and cannot be permitted to prove that a lien their acts declared to be valid is void because their acts were false.

The constitution prohibits liens on the homestead, except for purchase money or improvements. The lien asserted by appellant was for purchase money, if the transaction was genuine, and appellees are estopped, as against appellant, from proving that it was otherwise.

Appellant had no constructive notice of the fact that the deeds were intended to evade the law, for if the transactions had been as recited, the note would have been secured by a valid lien. That there was no actual notice, which might have arisen from the date of the deeds, the consideration and their registration (Easton & Thomas v. Dashield, 55 Tex. 508), was stipulated between the parties in the court below.

For the error committed in refusing to foreclose the appellants’ lien, the judgment is reversed and is here rendered for appellant, for the amount adjudged below and the foreclosure of his lien on the land described in his petition. It is so ordered.

Beversed and Bendered.

[Opinion delivered January 22, 1886.]