Court Opinion

ID: 9856818
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:59:24.396114+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:40:43.738261
License: Public Domain

SADLER, Justice (dissenting). When, but a short time before the majority opinion herein was handed down, the question before us in this case was viewed' in its proper perspective, uninfluenced by the distraction yet persuasiveness of a. strong equity, as in the case at bar, this, court with complete unanimity recognized and characterized a real estate purchase-contract as passing to the vendee named in. it “a property interest in land of such a character that it descends to his heirs and not to his administrators.” Keirsey v. Hirsch, 58 N.M. 18, 265 P.2d 346, 353. It is not surprising, therefore, that the-language then so correctly and truly spoken, by the court and concurred -in by each member of the present majority should so soon serve as a living preachment in support of the views which we advanced in our dissent filed herein. The effort to erase its effect ■by invoking what is said in Mesich v. Board of County Commissioners, 46 N.M. 412, 129 P.2d 974, instead of aiding the majority position, backfires and actually strengthens, ours. Note this language quoted with approval from Pomeroy’s Equity Jurisprudence, § 368, to-wit: “Although the land should remain in the possession and in the legal ownership of the vendor, yet equity in administering his own property and assets looks not upon the land as land,— for that has gone to the vendee, — but looks upon the money which has taken the place of the land; that is, so far as the land is a representative of the vendor’s property, so far as it is an element in his total assets, equity treats it as money, as though the exchange had actually been made, and the vendor had received the money and transferred the land.” (Emphasis ours.) How the majority can find comfort for their position in any influence of the doctrine of equitable conversion on the relationship of the parties under a real estate purchase contract is beyond me. To the extent it affects the rights or status of the parties at all, it only emphasizes the status of the vendee as acquiring an interest and estate in land and the vendor as thereafter, thanks to the operation of equitable conversion, as seeing his interest magically transformed into personal estate. As pointed out by the late Harlan F. Stone, former Chief Justice of the United States, in 13 Col.L.Rev. 369, cited by the majority, • “the vendee’s widow has dower in the property in jurisdictions where there is dower in an equitable right to land.” In New Mexico an equitable.estate in land will-support a decree to quiet title. Albarado v. Chavez, 36 N.M. 186, 10 P.2d 1102. The late Chief Justice Stone, in the article referred to above attributes the origin of this doctrine to Lord Eldon in Seaton v. Slade, 7 Ves.Ju. 265 (273) and quotes from his opinion in that case an exposition of the doctrine as follows: “The effect of a contract for purchase is very different at Law and in Equity. At Law the estate remains the estate of the vendor; and the money that of the vendee. It is.not so here. The estate from the sealing of the contract is the real property of the vendee. It descends to his heirs. It is devisible by his will; and the question, whose it is, is not to- be discussed merely between the vendor and vendee; but may be to be discussed between the representatives of the vendee.” (Emphasis ours.) Still another New Mexico decision, not noticed in our former consideration of this appeal, El Paso Cattle Loan Co. of El Paso, Tex. v. Stephens & Gardner, 30 N.M. 154, 228 P. 1076, 1077, supports the position we affirm on this question. The late Justice Parker in that case, speaking for the court, said: “If the husband alone cannot mortgage community real estate, then he certainly cannot make a valid contract to do so, which would be a sufficient basis upon which to declare an equitable 'mortgage. The whole doctrine of equitable mortgage rests upon the equitable maxim that equity regards that as done which ought to be done.” (Emphasis ours.) When our legislature in 1915 enacted in the wife’s protection, 1941 Comp. § 65-403, declaring that “any transfer or conveyance attempted to be made of the real property of the community by either husband or wife alone shall be void and of no effect,” it did not confine the prohibition to an attempted conveyance of a legal title alone; nor did it make any distinction between the legal and the equitable estate, either of which might become the subject of a transfer or conveyance. It prohibited all attempted transfers of an interest in “community real property”. The effect of today’s decision is-to read out of this statute its substance and leave it but an empty form. A progressively increasing volume of cases based on equitable estoppel will render it, instead of the conveyances it proscribes, “void and of no effect” to all practical intents and purposes. It follows that the motion for rehearing should be granted. Because the majority rule otherwise, I dissent. LUJAN, J., concurs.