Case ID: la-ann_35/html/0778-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Manning, J. Poché, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

No. 8742.
    G. M. Bayly, Executor, vs. M. A. Becnel et al.
    A suit for partition of a plantation may be cumulated with a demand for a settlement of accounts, created by its cultivation.
    An allegation that the property has been transferred to another is notan admission of the validity or completeness of the title of the transferree.
    It is not sufficient, as against a creditor of the husband, that a settlement of dowry is shewn by a marriage contract. The payment of it to the husband must be shewn by legal evidence, and by other evidence than the acknowledgment of the husband, or a judgment of court rendered between the husband and wife. When the money wras not paid in the presence of the notary, the wife must prove that it has been actually paid.
    The designation by the future spouses in the marriage contract of certain moneys as dotal property does not make it such. It must appear that it falls within the definition of dotal property in the Code.
    A donation by the future husband to the future wife propter nuptias does not form part of the dowry, and she has not a legal or tacit mortgage or privilege on the property of the husband for its restitution.
    The oath of a bookkeeper, that the accounts offered are correct, is not sufficient proof of them. His testimony can only establish that he charged the items on the books, and transcribed the accounts from the books, but does not prove that the items are correct unless he had knowledge that the articles were actually bought and shipped.
    When no objection was made to accounts and no complaint of their incorrectness through a series of years, and the accounts bear intrinsic marks of fairness, and there is no allegation of fraud or deceit, this acquiescence and unbroken silence will constitute an equivalent to an approval of them? to such extent at least as to make them admissible in evidence.
    
      1 PPEAL from the Twenty-sixth District Court, Parish of St. Charles. Malm, J. ...
    , Kennard, Mows & Prentiss for Plaintiff and Appellee.
    
      O. 0. Provosty for Defendant and Appellant.
   The opinion of the Court was delivered by

Manning, J.

On rehearing, the Decree was modified and the case remanded. Opinion by

Poché, J.