Hines v. Pointer

523 S.W.2d 733, 1975 Tex. App. LEXIS 2707
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedMay 9, 1975
Docket17617
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 523 S.W.2d 733 (Hines v. Pointer) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hines v. Pointer, 523 S.W.2d 733, 1975 Tex. App. LEXIS 2707 (Tex. Ct. App. 1975).

Opinion

OPINION

BREWSTER, Justice.

This is a trespass to try title case. The property involved was 110 acres of land near Fort Worth consisting of an 80 acre tract and a 30 acre tract that adjoined. The plaintiffs were heirs of Andrew Jackson Pointer, who died in 1910, and the defendants were Marshall Hines, Evie Pointer, A. J. Pointer, and W. L. Pointer. The Pointer defendants were also heirs of Andrew Jackson Pointer.

Following a jury trial the court rendered judgment awarding a ⅜⅛ interest in both tracts to the defendant, Marshall Hines, and awarding an undivided %ths interest in both tracts to the heirs of Andrew Jackson Pointer, as tenants in common, but excluding the defendants, Evie Pointer, A. J. Pointer and W. L. Pointer from any recovery at all. This is an appeal by all of the defendants from that decree.

We affirm.

In defendants’ 5th and 6th points of error they contend that the trial court erred in holding that, as a matter of law, under the undisputed evidence in this case, the heirs of Andrew Jackson Pointer (plaintiffs) were tenants in common as to both tracts of land, with the defendants, three of whom were also heirs of Andrew Jackson Pointer.

We overrule those two points of error.

There are two A. J. Pointers involved in the case. We will refer herein to the older one, who is now deceased, as Andrew Jackson Pointer, and to the younger one, a defendant here, as A. J. Pointer.

Plaintiffs alleged that a deed from J. J. Williams and wife conveying the 80 acre tract to Andrew Jackson Pointer, on November 12, 1903, is the common source of title of both plaintiffs and defendants to that tract.

Plaintiffs had alleged that Andrew Jackson Pointer and wife, M. J. Pointer, had acquired limitation title to both tracts here involved under the following statutes: Articles 5509, 5510, 5519 and 5519a, Vernon’s Ann.Civ.St., and that the limitation title they had acquired was the common source of title of both plaintiffs and defendants to the 30 acre tract.

They alleged in the alternative that the limitation title that Andrew Jackson Pointer and his wife, M. J. Pointer, had acquired to the 80 acre tract was the common source of title of both plaintiffs and defendants to the 80 acre tract.

The undisputed evidence in the case showed the execution and delivery of that deed from J. J. Williams to Andrew Jackson Pointer and that it was filed for rec *736 ord in the deed records of Tarrant County on November 12, 1903. The undisputed evidence showed that the record title to the 30 acres involved stood in the name of E. M. Williams by virtue of a conveyance made in 1896 by G. H. Smithee and wife to Williams. The record title to the 30 acre tract has never stood in the name of Andrew Jackson Pointer. Andrew Jackson Pointer died in November, 1910, and his will was probated in 1911 and the inventory of his estate listed a 100 acre farm out of the Susan Lynn Survey as an asset. The land involved here is located in that survey. Andrew Jackson Pointer devised his property to his wife, M. J. Pointer, for life and at her death what remained was to be divided equally among his 9 children. The widow of Andrew Jackson Pointer died in 1923.

It is undisputed that Andrew Jackson Pointer is the ancestor of all of the plaintiffs and that he went into possession of the entire 110 acres involved in 1903 openly claiming it as his own, farmed it, and stayed there until he died in 1910. From 1910 to 1919 the Andrew Jackson Pointer family continued to have exclusive adverse possession of that 110 acres, claimed title to it all, had it entirely enclosed in a fence, ran cattle and raised fruit on it during all of that time. The undisputed evidence showed that Andrew Jackson Pointer and his family held open, peaceable, adverse possession of the entire 110 acres from 1903 until 1919, farming and grazing it. In 1919 the family moved to West Texas, at that time leasing this 110 acre farm to a Mr. Williams for $75.00 a year until 1935. Out of the rent each year Mr. Williams, the tenant, paid the taxes and gave the balance of the rent to one of the Pointer heirs. This tenant, Williams, held open, continuous, adverse possession of the entire 110 acre farm for the Andrew Jackson Pointer family from 1919 to 1935, recognizing the Pointer family as owners of the land and paying rent to them.

The plaintiffs are in privity of estate with Andrew Jackson Pointer, because they were his descendants, and because of the will that he left. The widow of Andrew Jackson Pointer, by his will, was given a life estate in the farm. The remain-dermen are in privity of estate with the decedent and may tack both the adverse possession of the decedent and of the life tenant so as to mature a limitation title. (150 A.L.R. 557, and cases there cited.)

The undisputed evidence shows that Andrew Jackson Pointer, was also the ancestor of the defendants, A. J. Pointer, W. L. Pointer, and Evie Pointer. Luther (Luke) Pointer was the son of Andrew Jackson Pointer and Mollie J. Pointer. He was also the husband of Evie Pointer and the father of A. J. Pointer and W. L. Pointer.

We hold that the trial court was correct in holding as a matter of law that before 1940 the heirs of Andrew Jackson Pointer and M. J. Pointer had acquired title to and owned both the 80 acre tract and the 30 acre tract as tenants in common. See 15 Tex.Jur.2d 160, Cotenancy.

The court in Corn v. First Texas Joint Stock Land Bank, 131 S.W.2d 752 (Fort Worth, Tex.Civ.App., 1939, writ ref.), said at p. 757: “. . . they were joint tenants in the entire 691 acres. Such relation is characterized by the joint ownership by them of an estate in the land, regardless of the extent, nature or tenure of the respective interests.”

The heirs of Andrew Jackson Pointer and his wife, Mollie Pointer, under the undisputed evidence in the case, had acquired title to the 30 acre tract under the 10 year and 25 year limitation statutes by the year 1940. They acquired title to the 80 acre tract, as a matter of law, through the 1903 deed from J. J. Williams to Andrew Jackson Pointer, and by virtue of their being heirs of that grantee. Had that deed been defective in some way, the undisputed evidence is such that they have also acquired, by 1940, the title to the 80 acre tract by adverse possession under the 5, 10. and 25 year limitation statutes.

*737 As hereinabove stated a deed had been introduced by plaintiffs dated November 12, 1903, executed by J. J. Williams and wife, conveying the 80 acre tract to Andrew Jackson Pointer. Plaintiffs contend that this deed was the common source of title of both plaintiffs and defendants to the 80 acre tract. The defendants then introduced a warranty deed dated February 28, 1902, executed by Andrew Jackson Pointer and wife, M. J. Pointer, conveying this 80 acre tract to one Sam Williams.

The defendants here contend that the doctrine of after-acquired title applied to that fact situation, the result being that when Andrew Jackson Pointer, and wife Mollie, again acquired title in 1903, that it immediately vested back into the Sam Williams who had been named as the grantee in that 1902 deed that they had executed.

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Bluebook (online)
523 S.W.2d 733, 1975 Tex. App. LEXIS 2707, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hines-v-pointer-texapp-1975.