Court Opinion

ID: 9833906
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 23:08:13.599748+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:44:08.923015
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
After full consideration of appellant’s forceful motion for rehearing, we adhere to the conclusions expressed in our original opinion in this case.
It seems clear to us that that portion of appellant’s suit to which the pleas of jurisdiction and res adjudicata were sustained is a collateral attack upon the judgment of another court of competent jurisdiction which could only be made in the court in which the judgment was rendered. The strict enforcement of this rule is necessary to preserve the sanctity of judgments, and the evil which would result from its nonenforcement should, as always heretofore, receive higher consideration from our appellate courts than any injury that a party to such judgment, who failed • to follow the legal method provided for the correction of any error in the rendition of the judgment, might suffer.
As shown in our original opinion, the county court of Angelina county, at its March term, 1928, by an order duly entered in the minutes of the court, approved the final account of the appellee as guardian of appellant and his married sister, Helen. This order approving the final account of appellee guardian directs her “to deliver the estate of the said Henry Bohlssen, and Helen Bohlssen, remaining in her possession to each respectively, who is qualified by law to receive it.”
Thereafter, on April 17, 1928, appellant and his sister, Helen, executed a full receipt for all sums of money due them by appellee as guardian of their estate, and an express release of appellee and her sureties from all further liability “for any further sums of money.” This receipt and release was filed in the county court of Angelina county on the day of its execution.
On April 20, 1928, the county court rendered a judgment which, after reciting that the guardian had fully complied with the former order of the court approving her final account as guardian of appellant Henry Bohlssen and his sister, Helen, adjudged and ordered that “she, the said Mrs. H. G. Bohls-sen, be and she is hereby fully discharged as guardian of the estate of the said Helen Bohlssen and Henry Bohlssen, and it is also ordered that the guardianship of the estate of each, the said Helen and Henry Bohlssen, be, and the same is, hereby fully closed.”
There is nothing upon the face of this record which casts any doubt upon the power or jurisdiction of the court by which it was made to so dispose of the matter therein adjudicated, and the well-settled rule which requires that a suit to set aside a judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction must be' brought in the court in which the judgment was rendered is clearly applicable. We think the cases cited in our original opinion sustain this conclusion.
The receipt and the release executed by the appellant and the order of discharge entered thereon by the county court discharges and releases appellee from all liability as guardian for all money received by her as such guardian from the estate of her said wards. Of course, if the receipt and release upon which the order of discharge was based was obtained by fraud and misrepresentation, it should be set aside in a timely proceeding for that purpose brought in the court in which it was rendered, but no other court of concurrent jurisdiction can entertain such. suit. The two cases cited and relied on by appellant to sustain his contention that the court below had jurisdiction to entertain appellant’s suit for money received by the guardian for the estate of her wards and not shown on any inventory filed by the guardian are Yates v. Watson (Tex. Com. App.) 221 S. W. 966, 967, and Davis v. Harwood, 70 Tex. 71, 8 S. W. 58.
Neither of these cases sustains appellant’s contention. In the Tates Case the court holds that a bill of review of an order approving a final account of a guardian is not the proper proceeding to obtain correction of erroneous or incomplete inventories filed by a guardian, but the methods provided by the statute must be followed to obtain sucH relief. It seems clear to us that this ease has no bearing upon the question of whether the court below had jurisdiction of this suit to set aside the judgment or order of the county *918court of Angelina county closing tlie guardianship by appellee of appellant’s estate and discharging the guardian and her sureties from all further liability for any sums of money which she received for appellant’s estate.
The case of Davis v. Harwood is less in point, since it only decides that, after an estate had been withdrawn from administration by the heirs and its assets partitioned among them, the county court in which the administration had been pending had no- authority to require the administrator to file an additional inventory, but the heirs might sue the administrator in the district court to recover money or property received by him and not accounted for to the heirs. There was no contention in that case that the county court, in granting the application of the heirs for withdrawal of the estate from further administration, had heard and adjudicated the question of the administrator’s liability to the heirs and rendered judgment thereon, as in this case.-
 The further contention of appellant that the order of discharge of appellee and her sureties is void because not made at a term of the county court authorized by law was, we think, properly disposed of in our original opinion. Tn support of the conclusion reached in that opinion on this question, the cases of Employers’ Casualty Company v. Smith (Tex. Civ. App.) 284 S. W. 991, and Idar v. Uehlinger (Tex. Civ. App.) 49 S.W.(2d) 998, are directly in point.
In his motion for rehearing appellant has filed and presented a certificate from the county clerk of Angelina county showing that no order of the commissioners’ court of the county fixing any terms of that court in addition to those named in the Constitution was made and entered prior to the order of the county court closing the guardianship and discharging appellee.
In answer to this motion, appellee has presented a certificate from the clerk showing that the certificate presented by appellant is erroneous, and that the judgment discharging the guardian and her sureties’ was made and entered at a regular term of the court as fixed by an order regularly made and entered in the minutes of the court. .
It is a well-settled general rule that amendments of the record by certificates or affidavits cgnnot be considered by antappellate court. 3 Texas Jurisprudence, pp. 531-533, and 426, and cases there'cited.
If such evidence can be considered upon the question of the jurisdiction of the court a quo as that question affects the jurisdiction of this court, we find from the contradictory certificates presented that the judgment, of the county court attacked in this suit was rendered at a term of the court fixed by law.
These general observations upon the merits of the motion for rehearing were probably unnecessary, but, in deference to the earnestness of appellant’s counsel in presenting the motion, we deemed it proper to give here a statement of our conclusions thereon.