Court Opinion

ID: 9828253
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 18:14:20.193212+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:46.634083
License: Public Domain

On Appellee’s Motion for Rehearing.
’• Appellee insists in her motion for rehearing that the ¡trial court should have held that the five pieces of real estate in the city of Wichita Falls were a part of the community estate, and that the notes were also a pant. That appellee should have been awarded a one-half interest in these pieces of real estate and in the notes.
In Hedtke v. Hedtke, 112 Tex. 494, 248 S. W. 21, 22, Judge Greenwood, speaking for the Supreme Court, said:
“After reviewing the decisions of other states construing similar statutes, which held that even the guilty husband was entitled, under certain circumstances, to maintenance out of the wife’s separate property, this court held that, under facts showing feat the husband had no property and was incapable of supporting himself, and that the wife acquired her property by gift from her husband, the provision made by the decree of the trial court for the husband’s support was consistent with the statute and did not divest the wife of her title to the slaves.”
The opinion further says:
“In Rice v. Rice, 21 Tex. 58, the trial court rendered a judgment of divorce, whereby the revenues to he derived from certain improvements on three lots were to be applied to the support of the minor children of the divorced parties. The lots belonged to the separate estate of the husband, while the improvements were adjudged by the trial court to belong to the community estate of the husband and wife. On appeal by the husband, complaining of ¡the disposition made of the revenues to be derived from the improvements, it was held that the trial count was in error in framing its decree as though only the community property could be applied to the support of the minors, and the decree -was reversed with directions to the trial court to adjudge that the use of the entire property, including the lots belonging to the husband’s separate estate, be aplplied to the minors’ education and support, with reservation of the fee to the husband. In the opinion Chief Justice Hemphill calls attention to the fact that, in decreeing the division authorized by the statute, the rights of each spouse, as well as of the children, are to be protected, and that it is an utterly mistaken, view of ¡the statute that the court could not use the separate property of either spouse, as well as community property, in making suitable provision for either spouse or for the children.”
The present statute is essentially the same as the act of 1841, with .the elimination of the provision relative-to slaves, and with the correction of manifest typographical errors.
The opinion in Hedtke v. Hedtke says:
“Its language ought .to be given the meaning uniformly ascribed to it by this court, and that is, that the court pronouncing a decree of divorce is invested with wide discretion in disposing of any and all property of the parties, separate or community, and that its action, in the exercise of such discretion, should be corrected on appeal only where an abuse of discretion is shown in that the disposition made of some property is manifestly unjust and unfaii. Simons v. Simons, 23 Tex. 348; Rice v. Rice, 21 Tex. 68; Gulley v. Gulley, 111 Tex. 238, 231 S. W. 97, 15 A. L. R. 564.”
After a careful review of the facts in the case, and a due consideration of appellee’s motion for rehearing, we still conclude that the trial court cannot be held to have failed to -exercise that due regard for the rights of both parties in the settlement of the property rights. We are of the opinion that ap-pellee is in no position to complain of the' amount of the estate awarded her, and especially as it was awarded in cash.
Appellee’s motion for rehearing is overruled.