Court Opinion

ID: 9827315
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 17:24:20.028276+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:29.117826
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
In deference to appellee’s earnest motion for rehearing we are constrained to fortify our conclusions by reference to two Supreme Court cases deemed applicable to the issues in this case.
 In Continental National Bank v. Weems, 69 Tex. 489, 6 S.W. 802, 5 Am.St.Rep. 85, the court, speaking through Mr. Justice Gaines, said (page 805):
“If [the trustee] keeps on hand a sufficient sum to cover the amount of the trust money, we think * * * that the trust should attach to the balance that is found to remain in his hands. * * * Where the trustee mingles the trust money with his own, whatever he pays out (leaving enough to cover the trust fund) he is presumed to pay out of his own money.”
After discussing cases from other jurisdictions, the court continued:
“In these cases the doctrine has been so extended as to give priority from the general assets of the bank, on the ground .that these assets have been swelled by the trust funds, although it was not shown that a sufficient amount of cash remained on hand to cover the latter. * * * We are constrained to differ with them on the point, and to hold that, in order to fix the trust upon any part of the assets, the particular property into which trust money has been converted must be pointed out with at least practical definiteness and certainty.”
Judge Leddy wrote at length on the subject in the case of Tyler County State Bank v. Shivers, Tex.Com.App., 6 S.W.2d 108. He announced the correct rule in this language (page 110):
“It will be noted that the Supreme Court * * * distinctly holds that the person whose property has been converted by a trustee occupies no better position than a married woman whose husband has misappropriated her property. The rule is well established * * * that she * * * must distinctly trace her separate funds into specific property before she is entitled to impress a trust thereon. It is not sufficient if she merely establishes that her husband has mixed and mingled her separate funds with the community property so that its existence can only be determined by its being a part of the general mass of the common property.”
The burden was on appellee to overcome the presumption that appellant withdrew his own funds in order to purchase the cars. Appellee showed that its moneys went into the bank account, but did-not attempt to trace them into the automobiles. A trust will not be decreed on a mere suspicion; on the contrary, there must be a definiteness and a certainty that the particular property was purchased with trust funds, and the beneficiary must distinctly trace his money into the specific property. The evidence in the instant case does not show that any of appellee’s funds went into the purchase of' the cars; nor does it show that appellant did not have sufficient funds in the account to repay the amount he had collected for appellee.
The motion for rehearing is overruled.