Court Opinion

ID: 9830276
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 20:03:15.079021+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:17.528230
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON MOTION FOR REHEARING.
After due consideration, appellants’ motion for rehearing will be refused. But as their counsel complain because in our original opinion no direct reference is made to the question presented by appellants’ fifth assignment of error, we have concluded to state our reasons for not sustaining that assignment; and the reasons stated are equally applicable to the question of partition presented by the fourth assignment, and adverted to in the original opinion. The fifth assignment complains of the refusal of the trial court to give a special instruction requested by all of the defendants and reading as follows:
“If you believe from the evidence submitted to you that W. A. Hemphill sold the land in controversy with covenants of general warranly; and if you believe from the evidence that W. A. Hemphill is dead; and if you believe that said W. A. Hemphill owned an interest in the said J. G. Welsehmeyer league in Bastrop County, Texas; and if you believe that the plaintiff, Mrs. Lavinia Powell, was heir at law of said W. A. Hemphill and that he died without a will, and if you believe from the evidence that Mrs. Powell inherited the interest of said Hemphill in the Welsehmeyer league; and if you believe that the interest of said Hemphill in the said J. G. Welsehmeyer league was equal in *612value to the interest of the plaintiffs in the land in controversy, then I charge you to find a verdict for the defendants.”
This instruction was properly refused for three reasons:
1. Whether or not W. A. Hemphill had sold the land in controversy with covenants of general warranty, and whether or not he ever owned an interest in the Welschmeyer league, were questions of law only, arising upon undisputed facts, and such questions of law should not have been submitted to the jury for them to decide.
2. Some of the defendants had limited their defense on the ground referred to in the special charge by averments in their answer to the effect that W. A. Hemphill was entitled to one-third interest in the Welschmeyer land by virtue of his being the surviving husband of Mrs. Hemphill; and, as held in our original opinion, as Mrs. Hemphill left a surviving child, W. A. Hemphill, her husband, inherited nothing from her; and therefore the title asserted by the defendants referred to utterly failed; and, whatever may have been the rights of other defendants, the defendants who filed the special plea referred to were not entitled to have the issue referred to submitted to the jury, and as the refused instruction embraced all of the defendants, it was properly refused.
3. Aside from the form of the requested charge, and from any question of pleading, we hold that the testimony did not call for any charge on the subject referred to, because, in our opinion, W. A. Hemphill never owned any interest in the Welschmeyer land. The facts bearing on that question are as follows:
In 1837 Mary Andrews, the plaintiffs’ ancestor, married J. G. Welschmeyer, who died in 1839. About 1841 his surviving wife married W. A. Hemphill, and in 1847 Mrs. Hemphill died, leaving as sole heir her daughter Lavinia, who afterwards married G. W. Powell, and instituted this suit to recover the land in controversy. May 11, 1846, the Legislature of Texas passed a joint resolution for the relief of the heirs of John G. Welschmeyer, which reads as follows:
“Whereas, the board of land commissioners for the county of Harrisburg, having issued to John G. Welschmeyer his headright certificate for one league and labor of land; and whereas, the board of traveling commissioners having rejected the same upon the ground that the former husband of the wife of the said John G. Welschmeyer having drawn the same quantity of land; and whereas, the Constitution of the-Republic of Texas plainly and expressly declares that every head of the family shall be entitled to one league and one labor of land, and that said John G. Welschmeyer, by virtue of his marriage, is, in the language of the Constitution, the head of a family, and in order to protect and secure to the heirs their constitutional rights, therefore:
“See. 1. Be it resolved by the Legislature of the State of Texas, that the Commissioner of the General Land Office be, and he is hereby authorized and required to issue to the heirs of John G. Welschmeyer the headright certificate of the said Welschmeyer for one league and labor of land.
*613“See. 2. Be it further resolved, that this resolution take effect from and after its passage.”
The certificate referred to was issued May 11, 1846, and was after-wards located on the land referred to in the special charge under consideration as the J. G. Welschmeyer league. There was also testimony showing that the Welschmeyer land was superior to the land in controversy; and that Mrs. Powell, with the acquiescence of her father W. A. Hemphill, had appropriated all of it to her use; and W. A. Hemphill had sold the land in controversy by general warranty deed, and neither Mrs. Powell, her husband, nor any of the plaintiffs had ever asserted title thereto or paid taxes thereon until this suit was filed in March, 1901.
Counsel for appellants contend that the land certificate issued by authority of the joint resolution of the Legislature was personal property; that Mrs. Hemphill, by reason of her former marriage to Welschmeyer, was entitled to one-half thereof, and that under the fourth section of the act of the Congress of Texas, of date January 29, 1840, adopting the common law of England, Mrs. Hemphill’s interest in the certificate became community property between herself and W. A. Hemphill, who was then her husband. The section referred to declares' that all property which the husband or wife may bring into the marriage, except land and slaves and the wife’s paraphernalia, and all property acquired during the marriage, except paraphernalia and such land and slaves or their increase as may be acquired by either party by gift, devise, or descent, shall be the common property of the husband and wife. However, the third section of the act reads as follows:
“3. That neither the lands nor slaves which the wife may own, or to which she may have any right, title or claim at the time of her marriage, nor the lands nor the slaves to which she may acquire, during the coverture, any right, title or claim by gift, devise or descent, nor the increase of such slaves in each case, nor the paraphernalia as defined at common law, which the wife may have at the time of the marriage, or which she may acquire during the coverture, as aforesaid, shall, by virtue of the marriage, become the property of the husband, but shall remain the separate property of the wife.”
Sections 3 and 4 must be construed together, and it is quite apparent that the former operates as a limitation upon the latter, and excludes therefrom all lands and slaves to which the wife had any right, title or claim before coverture, or to which she acquires any such right during coverture, by gift, devise or descent. Counsel for appellants, on page 23 of their brief, concede that Mrs. Hemphill was not an heir of J. G. Welschmeyer; and if that statement be correct, and we are to look alone to the granting clause of the joint resolution of the Legislature, and the certificate and patent issued thereunder, granting the land to the heirs of John G. Welschmeyer, it would seem that Mrs. Hemphill never owned any interest in the Welschmeyer land. But if it be *614conceded that she did, and that the certificate by virtue of which the land was acquired was personal property, it does not follow that her interest was community property between her and Hemphill, merely because she was married to him at the time the certificate was issued.
In Welder v. Lambert, 91 Texas, 510, it was held that although, under our statute and under the Spanish law, the presumption of community property arises from the naked fact that it was acquired during the marriage; yet when, upon an exhibition of the whole title, it appears that its origin preceded the marriage, that presumption no longer prevails, and the property should be held to belong to the separate estate of the spouse to whom it is granted, although no other right than an equitable claim existed at the time of the marriage. The doctrine taught by that case is applicable to this. By reason of his compliance with the law regulating such matters, Welschmeyer was entitled to obtain from the government a league and labor of land. That was a claim to land. It had been approved by one board and rejected by another, when appeal was made to the Legislature, and that body recognized the claim as just and provided for its satisfaction by directing the issuance of a certificate for a league and labor of land. But the claim existed before that certificate was issued; and being a claim for land, Mrs. Hemphill's interest therein was controlled by the third section of the statute, and was her separate property. Hence we hold that whatever interest Mrs. Hemphill had in the Welschmeyer land was her separate property, and that W. A. Hemphill never at any time owned any interest whatever in the land.

Motion overruled.

Opinion delivered January 21, 1903.
Writ of error refused.