Wood & Bro. v. Collins

36 S.E. 423, 111 Ga. 32, 1900 Ga. LEXIS 478
CourtSupreme Court of Georgia
DecidedJune 5, 1900
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 36 S.E. 423 (Wood & Bro. v. Collins) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Wood & Bro. v. Collins, 36 S.E. 423, 111 Ga. 32, 1900 Ga. LEXIS 478 (Ga. 1900).

Opinion

Cobb, J.

Mrs. Collins made an application for the setting apart of a homestead and exemption of personalty out of the property of her husband as the head of a family consisting of herself and her minor children, it being alleged that he refused to make the application. The realty sought to be set apart consisted of a tract of land containing 341 acres, and the schedule of personalty consisted of numerous items, with the value of each affixed, aggregating $551. The affidavit of the surveyor was to the effect that the land sought to be exempted was worth $1,000. Wood & Brother, creditors of Collins, filed objections to the proceeding, on the grounds that the land was worth $2,500 instead of $1,000, and the personalty contained in the schedule was worth $200 more than the amount therein stated, and that the schedule did not contain “a full disclosure of the personalty of said W. W. Collins, because it does not contain $300 cash and one pistol, value $15.” Appraisers were appointed, who made a return that the realty was worth $1,000 and the personalty $493.75. Wood & Brother entered an appeal to the superior court. The case came on for trial in that court, and the result was a verdict finding “ the land to be worth $1,000, and no personal property fraudulently left out of the schedule.” The case is here upon a bill of exceptions sued out by Wood & Brother, assigning error upon the refusal of the court to grant a new trial in the case at their instance.

1. It is the duty of one who claims the benefit of the law allowing the setting apart of a homestead and exemption of personalty to act in perfect good faith, and to that end he must “make a full and fair disclosure of all the personal property, including money, stocks, and bonds, of which he may be pos[34]*34sessed at the time” his application for exemption is made. If a debtor is “guilty of wilful fraud in the concealment of part of his property from his creditors,” the law imposes as the penalty upon him that he shall lose the benefit of his exemption, so far as the rights of creditors whose debts were in existence at the date of the application are concerned. Civil Code, § 2830. The section above cited does not in terms apply to a case where the application is made by the wife to have the exemption set apart out of the property of the husband; but it would seem that when the wife is the applicant and she wilfully omits from the schedule filed by her property belonging to her husband which is subject to the payment of his debts, the penalty which the law imposes upon her husband if he is the applicant and guilty of such conduct should also fall upon her. In having the exemption set apart she claims through him, and, construing the law in relation to homesteads and exemptions in its entirety, it seems clear that when the wife is the applicant she is charged with the same duties and subject to the same penalties that the law imposes upon the husband when guilty of fraudulent conduct. Indeed, the law goes even farther than this, and makes the wife responsible for the fraud of her husband in concealing his property; and if any property be left out of the wife’s schedule through the fraud of the husband, even though the wife was no party to the fraud and was ignorant of it, she will have to suffer the penalty which the law imposes upon the husband when he is the applicant. Kirtland v. Davis, 43 Ga. 318. Creditors are permitted to object to the schedule for want of sufficiency and fullness or for fraud of any kind, as well as to dispute the valuation of the personalty, the propriety of the survey, or the value of the land; but they are required to “specify” their objections in writing. Civil Code, §2836. The purpose in requiring the objection to be thus specified is that the applicant may remove it by amendment if it is well taken, or may be in a position to intelligently combat it if he does not admit that it is well founded. When the schedule is objected to for want of fullness or sufficiency, the objection must put the applicant on notice of what he is charged with having omitted, describing with reasonable certainty the property claimed to be omitted. When [35]*35this is done, the issue to be tried is whether the articles described in the objections were the property of the applicant or person out of whose property the exemption is sought at the date of the application, and if so, whether such articles were concealed by the wilful fraud of the applicant. If the jury find that the property described in the objections was omitted from the schedule without any fraudulent intent, and it is thereafter delivered up, the fact that it was omitted would not defeat the application. If, on the other hand, the property described in the objections was omitted in consequence of a wilful and fraudulent intent to conceal the same, then the application would be defeated and the applicant would lose the benefit of the exemption so far as “pre-existing creditors” were concerned. Such being the result of a finding that property had been omitted from the schedule, it is not only not unreasonable but it is entirely proper that the objections should be so framed that the applicant would know exactly what charge he has to meet, and the objector should be held to strict proof of the charge as made in the objections. The objectors in this case having alleged that the omissions in the schedule consisted of $300 cash and a pistol worth $15, there was no error in requiring them to confine the proof to these items, nor in charging the jury, in effect, that their investigations on this branch of the case must be confined to the question whether either of these items was omitted. The rulings in Torrance v. Boyd, 63 Ga. 23, and McNally v. Mulherin, 79 Ga. 614, did not in any manner relate to the sufficiency of the pleadings.

2. The objectors offered an amendment to their objections, in which they set forth that sundry parties unknown to objectors were indebted to Collins, that by the collusion and fraud of Collins and his wife all reference to these debts was omitted from the schedule, and that the schedule did not contain a full .and fair disclosure of the property of Collins, and that his property had not in good faith been delivered up but had been in part fraudulently concealed. The court refused to allow this amendment, for the reason that its allegations did not state what property was omitted, and were not sufficient to put the applicant on notice of what she was to meet at the trial. That [36]*36there was no error in this ruling will sufficiently appear from what has already been said in this opinion.

3. The judge charged the jury as follows: “I charge you that the applicant would have nothing to do with the value of the land. The law requires the surveyor to survey the land and to value it under oath, and if that was done and the caveators were dissatisfied, then appraisers should be appointed to appraise the land. The applicant could have nothing to do with putting a value on it.” (The court then read the jury code sections 2828, 2830, 2834, 2836, 2837 and 2838.) This charge is assigned as error, “because it misstated the law, and is also an expression of opinion on the evidence in the case.” The charge is not subject to either of the objections made. If there is in it any opinion on the evidence in the case, we have not been able to discover it.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Maner v. Dykes
190 S.E. 189 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1937)
Alday v. Spooner
134 S.E. 343 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1926)
Michael v. Bacon
63 S.E. 228 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1908)
Roberts v. State
40 S.E. 297 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1901)
Central of Georgia Railway Co. v. Grady
39 S.E. 441 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1901)
Macon Consolidated Street Railroad v. Barnes
38 S.E. 756 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1901)
Barnes v. State
38 S.E. 396 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1901)
Keys v. State
37 S.E. 762 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1900)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
36 S.E. 423, 111 Ga. 32, 1900 Ga. LEXIS 478, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/wood-bro-v-collins-ga-1900.