Court Opinion

ID: 9591135
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:02:29.010932+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:47:06.703150
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
dissenting.
The superior court should be reversed in this case, in which a widow has been deprived of her right, as a joint tenant with right of survivorship, to fee simple title in her home upon the death of her second husband. She had originally gained fee simple title upon the death of her first husband, because when he was alive she was a joint tenant with him, with right of survivorship. It appears from the record that her second husband, now deceased, and his daughter and son-in-law, have worked a fraud on her by a deed purportedly transforming her right into one of tenancy in common by a deed of which she did not know and which ignored her right of survivorship. They subsequently carried that apparent fraud to court and convinced the superior court in an action for partitioning that they were entitled to such.
Although the guardians of the incompetent widow’s property should have brought an interlocutory appeal from the August 11, 1993 order of the superior court for an appraisal or an appeal from the order of March 9, 1994 (or May 7, 1994) approving the sale of the property to the son-in-law on the courthouse steps, the opportunity for attack is not completely lost.
When viewed in light of context, content, and purpose, the complaint of the plaintiff ward by her property guardians is in effect a *870motion to set aside a judgment based on lack of jurisdiction over the subject matter. OCGA § 9-11-60 (d) (1). Access to adjudication of the issue through this mechanism is proper, although a collateral attack by way of an original action on a void judgment under OCGA § 9-11-60 (a) would not be. The latter is so because in Murphy v. Murphy, 263 Ga. 280, 282 (430 SE2d 749) (1993), the Supreme Court restricted usage of that subsection to “judgments which lack either personal or subject matter jurisdiction” and further confined “subject matter jurisdiction” in the context of this subsection to mean “jurisdiction of the class of cases to which the particular case belongs.” Plaintiff does not dispute that the superior court had jurisdiction of her person or of partitioning actions, which it does. OCGA § 44-6-160.
Her argument is that the superior court did not have jurisdiction of the particular case of partitioning because the probate court had already taken jurisdiction of her property and had gone further and ordered that the deed purporting to create a tenancy in common was void. The earlier deed, creating the right of survivorship, was the foundation for the probate court order finding the husband in contempt. This would be a proper ground for a motion to set aside brought directly in the court in which the judgment was entered, pursuant to OCGA § 9-11-60 (d) (1), and should have been numbered in the clerk’s records with the same number as the case in which the attacked judgment was entered. What was in effect a motion to set aside was timely, because she had three years to bring it. OCGA § 9-11-60 (f).
Res judicata is totally irrelevant. The effort to cure should be considered as occurring in the same and not a subsequent case. The question raised by what was in effect a motion to set aside was whether the superior court had jurisdiction to permit a partitioning of property on the basis of a deed which the probate court had earlier determined was null and void. That probate court determination had not been appealed by the grantor husband (her second one) or by his daughter and son-in-law. Although there is some reference to an appeal having been taken to the superior court, it apparently was abandoned, the probate court order ignored, and the partitioning action pursued instead. There is no indication in the record, or even suggestion by any party, that the order was reversed, vacated, set aside, or declared void for lack of jurisdiction or any other reason. See Ga. Const. 1983, Art. VI, Sec. IV, Par. I; In re Estate of Adamson, 215 Ga. App. 613 (451 SE2d 501) (1994). The petitioners in the partitioning action simply disregarded it.
They were obligated first to move to set aside that probate court order, either in the probate court or in an original action in superior court under OCGA § 9-11-60 (d) (1), or to obtain its reversal by way of appeal. Only after that existing probate court order was no longer to *871be reckoned with, could those who a court had determined had no interest in the. property then petition to partition it. Had they done so, the widow would at the same time have had an opportunity to transfer the deed issue to the superior court, which had jurisdiction of the subject matter of title, or to originate in the superior court an action for declaratory judgment that the deed was void because it purported to devise what the grantor did not own. But none of this transpired. OCGA § 9-12-16 was not invoked.
Thus, the judgment of the superior court in the partitioning case should have been set aside by the court upon plaintiff’s prompting, as it was plain on the face of the record that the superior court had no jurisdiction of the subject matter of that partitioning, i.e., the property of the incompetent widow which was never properly transformed into a tenancy in common. It simply was not subject to a partitioning because there was an extant order of the probate court. The only interest which Rubye Mobley’s second husband could convey was his joint tenancy during his life. That is not what he tried to convey, and in fact that was not what his daughter and son-in-law were interested in, since he would be living in that property during his lifetime. Even if the probate court order declaring the attempted conveyance of a tenancy in common void was beyond its jurisdiction, the superior court should not have permitted the partitioning because the ward showed that the subject matter of the partitioning was invalid.
Plaintiff unartfully styled her action as one to set aside the deed instead of one to set aside the judgment which confirmed the deed, but she did contend that the superior court had no jurisdiction to order a partition and sale, and she prayed that the deed made by the commissioners appointed by the superior court on May 3, 1994, be declared null and void and set aside. It is clear that she seeks to have the court’s order set aside. She also prayed for “such other relief as may be equitable and just,” which embraces what should have been provided.
Appellees bank on the record showing that the face of the probate court order ruled on an issue over which it had no subject matter jurisdiction, but the record also shows on its face, without dispute, that the partitioning proceeded on a deed purporting to convey Herbert Mobley’s interest free and clear of Rubye Mobley’s existing right of survivorship. Appellees cannot insist that the partitioning matter is closed and, at the same time, challenge in this appeal the earlier and unappealed probate court order.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Judge McMurray joins in this dissent.
*872Decided May 27, 1997
Reconsideration denied June 18, 1997
Before Judge Smith.
John L. Watson, Jr., for appellants.
Smith, Welch, Studdard & Brittain, Benjamin W. Studdard III, for appellees.