Court Opinion

ID: 9807395
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:02:53.689451+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:35:44.036338
License: Public Domain

'ClauK, J.,
dissenting in part. Tbe testator left only one minor child, and to him be devised no realty except tbe remainder in 10 acres after tbe life estate therein devised to tbe widow. It seems to me that a homestead can not be laid off to tbe minor in other people’s property, and which they, not be, are to enjoy. Tbe adults to whom all tbe realty *211except the remainder in tbis 10 acres was devised, take it against tbe minor, and they have no right to a homestead against the testator’s creditors. The object of the homestead provision was not the postponement of creditors bnt the protection of the beneficiaries.
When the Constitution, Art. X, see. 3, provides that “the homestead after the death of the owner thereof shall be exempt from the payment of any debt during the minority of his children or any one of them,” it refers to cases where the homestead descends upon or is devised to such minors, and not to a case like the present in which it is devised to others and when the minor can derive no conceivable benefit from the exemption of the property. This case differs from all former ones in that the homestead is devised away from the minor, as the homesteader had a right to do.
A reasonable construction is that exemption “during minority” is for the sole benefit df the minor. To construe the language literally and give the adult devisees of the homestead protection from the creditors of the testator during the minority of a minor who can. not enjoy a foot of the homestead, savors of the literalness which an ancient writer tells us sentenced to death a surgeon for reviving by the use of a lancet one stricken with sudden illness, because the statute punished with death any one who should draw blood in the streets. If the Constitution had provided that the homestead should remain a homestead during the minority of anyone of the children, and good alike against adult heirs and devisees, then the contention of the defendant would be valid. The homestead exemption in favor of a minor can not be more extensive than the minor’s interest in the homestead.
I concur that there is no continuation of the personal property exemption after the death of the debtor.