Massillon Engine & Thresher Co. v. Barrow

203 S.W. 933, 1918 Tex. App. LEXIS 520
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedMay 13, 1918
DocketNo. 367.
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 203 S.W. 933 (Massillon Engine & Thresher Co. v. Barrow) 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
Massillon Engine & Thresher Co. v. Barrow, 203 S.W. 933, 1918 Tex. App. LEXIS 520 (Tex. Ct. App. 1918).

Opinion

BROOKE, J.

On the 7th day of October, 1903, J. M. Barrow and wife, Jane Barrow, Lee Barrow and wife, Josephine Barrow, and Clarence Barrow and wife, Rosa Barrow, executed to B. R. Garland, trustee, in favor of,the Massillon Engine & Thresher Company, a deed of trust on 540 acres in the F. Banda survey and 160 acres in J. S. Barrow preemption survey, to secure the payment of certain notes given by J. M. Barrow, Lee Barrow, and Clarence Barrow to the Massillon Engine & Thresher Company. Afterwards, on the 13th day of March, 1905, in the district court of Chambers county, Tex., the Massil-lon Engine & Thresher Company recovered judgment against J. M. Barrow, Lee Barrow, and Clarence Barrow for the amount of the notes above described and for foreclosure of their deed of trust lien on the land described. An order of sale was issued on said judgment, and on April 27, 1905, the appellees in this court, plaintiffs in the district court, Clarence Barrow and wife, Lee Barrow and wife, and J. M. Barrow and wife, secured a writ of injunction from the district judge of Chambers county, Tex., prohibiting the sale of said property under the order of sale issued in the forclosure case, upon the ground that the property involved was at the time of the execution of said deed of trust the homestead of the plaintiffs.

Plaintiffs allege that J. M. Barrow and wife, Clarence Barrow and wife, and Lee Barrow and wife are, respectively, the owners of 62 acres undivided interest in and to the 700 acres of land described in. said deed of trust, and claiming said 62 acres undivided interest as their homestead. A temporary writ of ihjunction was granted by the court, and upon trial of the case on the 4th day of June, 1917, the court entered Judgment for the plaintiffs, appellees in this court, perpetuating the injunction granted theretofore. Some of the original plaintiffs had died before the case was tried, but it is agreed by the parties that all necessary and proper parties, plaintiffs and defendants, were before the court on trial.

It might be well, however, to state that during the pendency of the suit the land was partitioned among several tenants in common, including the original plaintiffs. The contention of appellees was that they were entitled to acquire homesteads upon the urn-divided tract of land. J. M. Barrow and Lee Barrow having died since the suit was instituted on the 6th day of June, 1917, théir heirs were made parties plaintiff by an amended pleading. The undisputed evidence shows that all three of the original plaintiffs were married men, and were either living upon the land covered by the mortgage at the time of its execution as their respective homes or were using parts of same as homestead property, and that each of said original plaintiffs so owned and used less than 200 acres of land.

Appellant’s first assignment of error challenges the action of the lower court in rendering judgment for the plaintiffs, in that the great weight of credible testimony in this cause discloses that the land described in the mortgage executed by J. M., Lee, and Clarence Barrow and their wives to the Massillon Engine & Thresher Company was not the homestead of said Barrows at the time of the execution of said mortgage, in that it had not been appropriated, designated, and named as a homestead, or used in such a manner as *934 to make it a homestead, and because the preponderance of the credible testimony was that only a small part of said land was being used or claimed as a homestead by said Barrows at the time of the execution of said mortgage.

The proposition under this assignment is that, in order for appellees to have claimed a homestead of their interest in the undivided estate of J. S. Barrow, deceased, they must have lived upon and inclosed and used such portion of said undivided estate as they claim as homestead; and appellees, in this case, could not and cannot claim as a homestead more than such amount in the undivided estate as they actually lived upon, used, and enjoyed as homestead, and as was afterwards set apart to them in the partition of the J. S. Barrow estate, and, the evidence showing un-disputedly that they did not so actually live upon what they now attempt to claim as a homestead, they are not entitled to recover.

[1] On the contrary, it is contended that the judgment of the court sustained the contention of plaintiffs that the property covered by the lien included the homestead^ of each of them, and that the evidence was sufficient to show that the appellee Clarence Barrow and his brothers, J. M. Barrow and Lee Barrow, were living upon the land with tlieir respective wives as their homesteads at the time of the execution of the mortgage; that the subsequent partition of the land among the cotenants did not have the legal effect to disturb the respective homesteads which the original plaintiffs had thus acquired. We' are of opinion that the facts sustain appellee’s contention, and we are of opinion that, where tenants in common live upon a large tract of land, each occupying different parts of the same as their respective homesteads, the homestead interest of each extends through the entire tract, and upon partition each of said cotenants is entitled to a homestead containing not exceeding 200 acres of land. Brown v. McLennan, 60 Tex. 43; Luhn v. Stone, 65 Tex. 439; Griffin v. Harris, 39 Tex. Civ. App. 586, 88 S. W. 493; Powell v. Ott, 146 S. W. 1019.

[2] Without going into the testimony in detail, it is sufficient to say that the evidence was sufficient, in our opinion, to show that the said Barrows were living upon the land with their respective wives as tlieir homestead at the time of the execution of the mortgage, and in our opinion the subsequent partition of the land among the cotenants did not have the legal effect to disturb the respective homesteads which the original plaintiffs had thus acquired. Clements v. Lacy, 51 Tex. 150; Morgan v. Estate of Morgan, 1 Posey, Unrep. Cas. 400; Parr v. Newby, 73 Tex. 468, 11 S. W. 440; Jenkins v. Volz, 54 Tex. 639. The assignment is therefore overruled.

[3] The second assignment of error is that the court erred in rendering judgment herein and perpetuating the injunction, because 200 acres of the land described in the mortgage executed by the Barrows to the Massillon Engine & Thresher Company, including the homestead of J. S. Barrow, deceased, where his widow lived at the time of the execution of the mortgage, could not, on the date of the execution of the mortgage, be the homestead of said Barrow, who executed the mortgage, for the reason that it was tlieir mother’s homestead, and said Barrows only acquired a right in and to said 200 acres of land at the death of their mother, which occurred after the date of the execution of the mortgage, and said 200 acres was subject to be sold in satisfaction of the judgment in favor of the Massillon Engine & Thresher Company.

The proposition under this assignment is that, so long as a surviving widow lives on a homestead, even if the children own the legal title, she is entitled to 200 acres as her homestead, and the children cannot waive homestead rights therein until her death or abandonment of her homestead rights.

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Related

Morgan v. Massillon Engine & Thresher Co.
274 S.W. 255 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1925)
Massillon Engine & Thresher Co. v. Barrow
231 S.W. 368 (Texas Commission of Appeals, 1921)

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