Court Opinion

ID: 9657543
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 20:30:02.049626+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:05:46.409830
License: Public Domain

White, C. J.,
concurring with Carter and Spencer, JJ.
I concur in what Carter, J., says. I would add further *155what seems to me to be plainly apparent. The' statute is in derogation of the common law, must be strictly construed, and creates a new right to antenuptially contract which was nonexistent before. By its terms it is limited to real property. We have no right to inquire into the policy or wisdom of this legislative declaration. And, even if we did, the statute is designed, in the premarital context, to free the fixed, separately inalienable inchoate interest of the spouse in real estate from testamentary restriction. A spouse’s unfettered power to dispose of his or her personal property, inter vivos, contrasts sharply. A premarital contract, with a disclosure required (as it is), and only partially freeing personal property from the descent statute, could lead to problems invading the transcendent considerations present in preserving the freedom of alienation of personal property inter vivos.