Court Opinion

ID: 9829156
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 19:02:05.226441+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:57.818790
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Appellees quote the following definition from 4 Kent’s Commentaries, p. 127:
“Words of limitation mark the period which is to determine the estate; but words of condition render the estate liable to be defeated in the intermediate time, if the event expressed in the Condition arises before the determination of the estate, or completion of the period described by the limitation. The one specifies the utmost time of continuance, and t^ie other marks some event which, if it takes place in the course of that time, will defeat the estate. The material distinction between a condition and a limitation consists in this: That a condition does not defeat the estate, although it be broken, until entry by the grantor or h'is heirs. But it is the nature of a limitation to determine the estate when the period of limitation arises without entry or claim.”
The argument is then made that the stipulations in Ward’s deed to appellant was a conveyance with limitation of title, rather than upon condition subsequent', because it marks the period of 24 months as the time within which the church should be erected, and since that stipulation was followed' by another to the effect that, in the event of a failure to comply with that requirement, the “conveyance shall become null and void.” The period of 24 months fixed as the period within which the church should be built was not “the utmost time of continuance” of the estate, and after the expiration of which the title necessarily terminated. The 24 months named merely fixed the period within which the condition was to be performed by the grantee in connection with the express stipulation that, if complied with within that period, the instrument should then operate as a conveyance of absolute title, which meant that it would in that event continue forever. The time so fixed was but a part and parcel of the condition, and it did not of itself necessarily render the conveyance one to last only during that period. The au-*1076ttiority quoted clearly supports the conclusion we reached on original hearing. To the same effect is McBride v. F. & M. Gin Co. (Tex. Civ. App.) 152 S. W. 1135, also cited by appellee; also 1 Tiffany, Real Property, pp. 262, 263, 268.
Since the rendition of our judgment on original hearing appellant has filed an offer to remit any claim for the value of timber destroyed by appellee on the land in controversy. As indicated in our original opinion, the case was remanded for another trial solely by reason of that claim. With that claim now eliminated, it follows from our former conclusions that judgment must be and the same is here rendered in favor of appellafat for the land in controversy, the judgment of the trial court having been already reversed; and appellees’ motion for rehearing is overruled.