Court Opinion

ID: 9644798
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:05:15.334913+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:07:11.274160
License: Public Domain

STEAKLEY, Justice
(dissenting).
The majority apparently would not deny that the homestead of the Harris family continued after the divorce of George D. Harris and Billie Rae Harris, with the latter as its head, by reason of her continued occupancy of the property with her minor child. See Woods v. Alvarado State Bank, 118 Tex. 586, 19 S.W.2d 35 (1929). The holding is that this homestead was destroyed upon and because of the later marriage of Billie Rae Harris to James A. Riley. This is notwithstanding that it was neither shown nor claimed by the lienhold-ers that Riley as the head of the Riley family had otherwise or elsewhere established a homestead. The majority reasons that the claim of the continuing existence of the Harris family homestead fails because there can be no homestead apart from the *570Riley family. This would not be so if the head of the family surviving the divorce were the husband.
The claim of Billie Rae Riley is that the homestead of the family of which she was the head continued through her marriage to Riley until abandoned or otherwise displaced by a homestead of the Riley family. She is not, as the majority asserts, undertaking to “prove a homestead for the Riley family by showing the prior existence of the homestead of the Harris family.” She is not claiming a homestead interest in the property for the Riley family. The existing homestead of the Billie Rae Harris family is presumed to continue and I would hold under the particular facts here that it was not displaced since it was not shown that Riley had established a homestead for his family. This comports with the liberal construction traditionally given our homestead laws.
Kirkwood v. Domnan, 80 Tex. 645, 16 S.W. 428 (1891) decided a related problem in the context of the marriage of a divorced wife who was residing upon homestead property of the former marriage and maintaining the minor children of that marriage. The property in question was community in which the first husband owned a one-half interest. After the divorce, the husband executed a deed of trust upon the property under which it was thereafter sold to his creditor, who brought suit for partition. In speaking of the situation after these events, it was stated by the Court that the wife “having a family, [i. e., from the first marriage] had a homestead interest in the one undivided half of the property that was owned by her; and that interest was protected from forced sale.” [i. e., after the second marriage] In Chamlee v. Chamlee, 113 S.W.2d 290 (Tex.Civ.App.1938, no writ), a widow with two minor children established a homestead prior to her second marriage, which subsequently ended in divorce. There were.no children born of the second marriage. The second husband sought foreclosure against the land constituting his former wife’s homestead during her widowhood, upon the claim that her right to the homestead terminated upon dissolution of their childless marriage. The Court held that the prior homestead right continued during the second marriage and after its dissolution. See also In Re Hawthorne, 45 F.Supp. 374 (N.D.Tex.1942).
Petitioners appear to acknowledge that the remand ordered by the court of civil appeals to try the issue of abandonment must stand if it is held that the homestead exemption survived the remarriage of Billie Rae Harris. I would affirm this judgment.