Court Opinion

ID: 9831884
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 21:27:01.533401+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:38.820484
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
In the motion for a rehearing it is contended that, if Johnson is to be considered *404merely a volunteer in the proceedings in the court below, then the judgment rendered in favor of the insurance company against him was void, because there were no pleadings to support it. We are not called upon in this appeal- to revise that judgment. No complaint in any form is here made of its rendition. It is only the judgment in favor of Hall against the insurance company that is assailed in the briefs here presented in this appeal. We referred to Johnson’s attitude as a volunteer in the discussion of the case merely as a reason why he had no right to complain of that judgment.
From the argument made in this motion, it is evident that the original opinion is interpreted by counsel as holding that Mrs. Hall would be a necessary party to a suit seeking to subject the insurance money to the payment of her husband’s debt. We do not mean to so hold. Indeed, it is not necessary to do so in this instance in order to sustain the conclusions announced. It may be true, as is asserted by counsel, that the husband could, without the consent of the wife, dispose of the insurance money received for the loss of the homestead. Such proceeds being personal property, their conveyance is not subject to the restrictions with which the alienation of the homestead is surrounded.
What we mean to hold is that Hall could not be deprived of his constitutional exemption in the insurance money by a proceeding to which he was not a party. The decisions cited, in which it was held that the wife was a necessary party in order to divest her of her homestead rights, were simply mentioned as supporting the proposition that the holder of a property right cannot be divested of that right in ¿ legal proceeding to which he is not a party. Money collected on an insurance policy for the loss of a home is not in all respects the same as money realized from the sale of the homestead. Where the homestead is sold, the conversion into money is voluntary, and the wife has presumably conformed to all the legal requirements in making the conveyance and in parting with her interest. Where the home has been “destroyed and the insurance money is collected, the situation is quite different. Here the conversion into money is involuntary — the result of a casualty over which the parties have no control. The proceeds from the voluntary sale of the homestead are exempt from the payment of debts for a limited period of time, by virtue of a statute specially enacted for that purpose, while the insurance money is protected by that section of the Constitution which exempts-the homestead itself.
It is again contended that Hall had notice of the pendency of the garnishment proceedings, and that it was his duty to inform the insurance company in some manner of I his claim that the property was his homestead. There is no evidence that Hall knew when the garnishment proceedings would come to a trial, or when the money would be paid over to Johnson after a judgment had been rendered in his favor against the insurance company in the garnishment suit. As stated before, the testimony shows that the notice of the pendency of the garnishment proceedings reached Hall after the judgment was rendered, and there is nothing to indicate that he had any notice that the money had not been paid at the time he received the notice.
The motion for rehearing is overruled.