Case ID: yeates_1/html/0074-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

*Grace Scott against Ezra Croasdale.
    S. C. 2 Dall. 127.
    Dower of the wife is barred by the sheriff’s selling the lands under a levari facias, on a mortgage executed by the husband alone after marriage.
    Action of dower in 113 acres of land in Southampton township, in Bucks county.
    This cause came before the court on a case stated; and the question on the facts shortly was, whether a man seized of lands, afterwards marrying, and then mortgaging the premises, without his wife joining in the mortgage deed, and the premises being sold by the sheriff under a levari facias issued in due form of law, against the executors of the husband, his widow could maintain dower thereof against the vendee.
    Mr. Sergeant, for the demandant,
    contended that dower was favoured in law, and that the law here was as in England, that unless the feme joined in the deed with her baron, and was separately examined, she could not be precluded from her dower.
    
      Explained in 3 R„ 129.
    Cited in 43 Pa., 153, to support title proposition that a widow is entitled to dower only in what remains of her husband’s estate after payment of debts, whether of record or not.
    Mr. Wilcocks, for the defendant,
    insisted that under the act of assembly 4th Anuse, passed in 1705, (Old edition of Raws, p. 27, § 10) the legislature had directed that the widow should hold her dower or thirds during life of such lands as should yield yearly rents and profits; and the said profitable lands and tenements, and the unimproved or rough land next adjacent thereto, should not be sold but for payment of intestate’s debts. This evidently shewed that the dower of the wife must be subjected to the payment of debts; and in a late case of Howel v. Leacock, where lands had been sold by executors for payment of debts, the widow’s dower was held to be barred; and in all cases of sales under the intestate acts, the widow is only entitled to one-third of the clear residue.
   Mr. Wilcocks was stopped by the court. They said the point was too clear to bear an argument. Lands in Pennsylvania, by the policy of the legislature, were made assets for the payment of debts; and the present case cannot be distinguished from a sale under a common judgment, fieri facias and venditioni exponas. The chief justice said, he perfectly recollected a similar determination in this court, about thirty years ago, when the opinions of several eminent counsel were read upon the argument, concurring with the resolution of the court.

Judgment for the tenant.