Court Opinion

ID: 9808526
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:40:42.99694+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:14:25.796911
License: Public Domain

Clark,, J.,
dissenting: The husband executed his deed with full covenants of warranty. In a subsequent deed the wife executed a release of her contingent right of dower. Her privy examination was duly and regularly taken. The only defect that can be urged is that “the written consent” of her husband was not taken, but the conveyance is not of her own land, and even if it were the previous deed of the husband with warranty was a written consent given with all solemnity. There is no statute anywhere which requires that the husband’s assent shall be in the same deed with the wife’s release of her dower. When it is the husband’s land and he has conveyed it by deed with full warranty and subsequently the wife releases her dower right by deed with privy examination, the warranty in the husband’s deed is not only an assent to the wife’s subsequent release of dower but a solemn contract that she shall make the release and is a liability of his estate should he die before his wife and without procuring her to execute such release.
There was a line of decisions all quoted in Barrett v. Barrett, 120 N. C., 127; to the effect that where the privy examination of the wife was taken before the proof of the execution by the husband, the probate was *576insufficient, but that was not the case here, and even that was held so exceedingly technical that Chapter 293, Laws 1893, was enacted: “That in all cases . . . when the acknowledgment of a husband has been taken before or subsequent to the acknowledgment and privy examination of his wife” it shall be “valid and binding” and Chapter 136, Acts 1895, recognizing the inconvenience that might arise from the previous technical construction, further provides that the acknowledgment of the husband and wife may be before different officers and even in different States.
As already stated, the release of dower being by deed with privy examination duly taken was not only with written assent of her husband but in performance of his contract of warranty under seal. If it was a conveyance of her property, held by her in dependant of any control of her husband, the case is that of two joint owners of an interest in' property, which can be conveyed by them in separate deeds and construing the two papers together the Court should hold there was a conveyance of the entire title, each assenting to what the other had done. There is no statute or good reason why both must necessarily join in the same deed, which at times may be inconvenient, as is recognized by Chapter 136, Acts 1895, and in the absence of any statute requiring joinder in the same deed, even if it were desirable, the Courts cannot make one. Green v. Bennett, 120 N. C., 394, was decided on a transaction occurring before the above cited Acts of 1893 and 1S95 and therefore it was governed by the technical ruling in Ferguson v. Kingsland, 93 N. C., 337 and such cases, a distinction which was pointed out in Barrett v. Barrett, 120 N. C., 127. In the present case, rights of third persons have not intervened and the cui-ative statutes apply.