Court Opinion

ID: 9669173
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:41:56.188278+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:53.215272
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING
By her motion for rehearing, Mrs. Roach raises only one matter that was not determined by our original decision and requires further comment. She alleges that Mr. Roach has received, accepted and sold some of the property awarded him by the trial court’s judgment and, having accepted the benefits of the decree, he cannot now deny its validity under Matter of Marriage of Rutherford, 614 S.W.2d 498 (Tex.Civ.App.—Amarillo 1981, writ dism’d). In support of her allegation, she tendered a certified copy of her deed conveying to him all of her right, title and interest in and to the six tracts of real property awarded him out of the community estate by the court’s judgment, and certified copies of two deeds by which he conveyed two of the same pieces of property to third parties.
In response, Mr. Roach asserts, by affidavit, that although he has contested the judgment, he obtained the property eleven months after the rendition of judgment because of financial necessity, and conveyed the two tracts in compliance with contracts for deed by which he and Mrs. Roach previously had sold five of the properties. Furthermore, he represents that the effect of his deeds was to convert the community estate’s interest in the properties into promissory notes secured by deeds of trust, and that the community’s interest remains essentially unchanged. He then argues that since in her brief, Mrs. Roach not only conceded he was entitled to receive what he received in the judgment but was entitled to receive $25,353.15 more,4 he is not es-*533topped to prosecute his appeal for further recovery, Carle v. Carle, 149 Tex. 469, 234 S.W.2d 1002, 1004 (1950), particularly because he accepted the benefits of the judgment out of financial duress, Haggard v. Haggard, 550 S.W.2d 374, 376 (Tex.Civ.App.—Dallas 1977, no writ); McCartney v. Mead, 541 S.W.2d 202, 205 (Tex.Civ.App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 1976, no writ), and no prejudice to Mrs. Roach has been shown. Haggard v. Haggard, supra.
In reply, Mrs. Roach filed her affidavit by which she challenges, and asserts the converse of, certain statements of fact contained in Mr. Roach’s affidavit. In particular, she questions his claim of financial duress, and she contradicts his claim that the community estate’s interest was not changed by his sale of one particular tract of realty.
In brief, then, Mrs. Roach has exhibited the deeds to now invoke the principle of estoppel which denies one an appeal from a judgment when he has voluntarily accepted the benefits of it. Carle v. Carle, supra; Matter of Marriage of Rutherford, supra. Mr. Roach seeks to avoid the estoppel by showing that his situation fits the Carle exception that estoppel does not operate when a reversal of the judgment cannot possibly affect his right, conceded by Mrs. Roach, to the benefits accepted, or that the Carle rule is inapplicable because his acceptance of the judgment’s benefits under the spur of financial necessity was not a voluntary acceptance, Cole v. Cole, 568 S.W.2d 152, 154-55 (Tex.Civ.App.—Dallas 1978, no writ), and because Mrs. Roach would not be prejudiced by the appeal to the extent that the wrong could not be remedied upon retrial. Haggard v. Haggard, supra.
Nevertheless, under the presentation, the question of Mr. Roach’s voluntary acceptance of the judgment’s benefits is not conclusively answered; indeed, the presentation does no more than merely raise the fact issue of estoppel. Although we have the power to ascertain such matter of fact as may be necessary to the proper exercise of our jurisdiction, Tex.Rev.Civ. Stat.Ann. art. 1822 (Vernon 1964); Glidden Company v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Company, 155 Tex. 591, 291 S.W.2d 315, 317 (1956), we are unable to hold that the presentation establishes the fact that Mr. Roach is estopped to prosecute his appeal. Accord, Coplin v. Coplin, 579 S.W.2d 278, 279 (Tex.Civ.App.—Dallas 1979, no writ).
Mrs. Roach’s motion for rehearing is overruled.

. The 525,353.15 figure is Mrs. Roach’s calculation, made when Mr. Roach disputed the amounts of reimbursement and property values included in the judgment, upon which she based her proposed conditional reformation of the judgment (in a lesser sum) mentioned in the first paragraph of the original opinion; but, since the matter neither influenced our original disposition of the appeal nor controls our deci*533sion on rehearing, it was not, and will not be, additionally addressed.