Court Opinion

ID: 9665682
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:54:50.225447+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:17.783912
License: Public Domain

HALL, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. In my opinion the one-half of the dairy properties found and declared by the trial court to be community property was under the joint management, control, and disposition of Mr. and Mrs. Cockerham, albeit he possessed and managed the dairy at all pertinent times.
Without dispute, the community dairy properties were purchased with what are now classed as joint management community funds. The dairy properties have never met, and do not now meet, any of the classes of community property characterized in Section 5.22(a), V.T.C.A., Family Code, as community property subject to the sole management, control, and disposition of a spouse. Paragraph (c) of Section 5.22 provides that all community property not listed in paragraph (a) thereof is joint management community, absent a contrary arrangement between the spouses which we do not have here.
The provision in Section 5.24 of the Family Code that, during marriage, property is presumed to be subject to the sole management, control, and disposition of a spouse if it is held in his or her name or if it is in his or her possession, does not, in *160my opinion, operate to convert joint management community property to sole management community property and thereby exempt it from liability of community debts created by the spouse out of possession. See Coghlan v. Sullivan, (Tex.Civ.App.-El Paso, 1972, no writ history) 480 S.W.2d 229, 230. According to the terms of this statute, the presumption provided therein is intended to protect non-fraudulent third persons1 who have dealt with a spouse in sole possession of joint management community property from claims of the other spouse, or another claiming from the other spouse, that the spouse in possession lacked authority to deal with the property as sole management property.
The wife is now the husband’s equal as to joint management community property. Cooper v. Texas Gulf Industries, Inc., (Tex.Sup.1974) 513 S.W.2d 200. Section 5.61(c) of the Family Code subjects joint management community property to the liabilities incurred by either spouse before or during marriage. And, paragraph (a) of § 110 of The Bankruptcy Act provides that the trustee in bankruptcy “shall in turn be vested by operation of law with the title of the bankrupt as of the date of the filing of the petition [in bankruptcy], except insofar as it is to property which is held to be exempt, to all of the following kinds of property wherever located: (5) property . . . which prior to the filing of the petition he could by any means have transferred or which might have been levied upon and sold under judicial process against him, or otherwise seized, impounded, or sequestered . . . ” 11 U.S.C.A. § 110.
I would sustain the trustee’s first two points of error, reverse the trial court’s judgment insofar as it exempts the community dairy properties from liability for Mrs. Cockerham’s debts, and render judgment that these properties are liable for the debts in question along with the other community debts. In all other respects I agree with the majority and would affirm the judgment.

. By Acts 1973, 63rd Leg., p. 1606, ch. 577, Sec. 27, eff. Jan. 1, 1974, the heading of Section 5.24 was changed from “Presumption” to “Protection of Third Persons.” Other changes, immaterial here, were also made at that time. The caption of the amendatory Act stated its purpose to be for “amending Section 5.24, relating to the protection of third persons.”