Court Opinion

ID: 9828834
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 18:46:48.85214+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:53.623496
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
In its motion for rehearing, the appellee insists that we erred in considering appellant’s assignment of error No. 7, .for the reason that there is no such assignment in the brief of appellant. The motion states that the only place any assignment raising the question complained of as. assignment No. 7 can be found in the brief is in paragraph 7 of defendant’s motion for a new trial. The brief of appellant, -filed in this court on pages 2 and 3, sets out ten assignments of error, including assignment No. 7, complaining of the refusal of the court to give the exact issue set out in our opinion. It was not followed in the brief by any proposition or statement thereunder, but ap-pellee in its brief, on page 34 thereof, without any objection to the assignment on account of such failure by appellant to follow same with proposition and statement, replied thereto in the following language:
“The last question raised, ‘Was Mrs. Kate Thurman in possession of the land in question from December, 1920, until the date of the deed from Mrs. S. E. Thurman to J. H. Thurman?’ was not disputed, and the trial court is not required to submit undisputed questions.”
We did not sustain assignment of error No. 7, but merely considered the fact therein raised as an admitted fact in the disposition of the case, because same was expressly admitted by appellee in its brief.
Appellee excepts to the following finding of fact contained in our original opinion:
“Intervener had no knowledge whatever of the execution of the note until after it had come into the possession of the appellee bank, and did not know that the title to the property was ever in Mrs. S. E. Thurman or that Mrs. S. E. Thurman ever conveyed same to J. H. Thurman.”
The statement should be modified so as to state that the evidence did not show clearly when intervener obtained knowledge of the. existence of the note.
It is earnestly insisted that the decision in this case is in conflict with the cases of Jones v. Male, New England Deposit & Trust Oo. v. Harrell, and similar cases distinguished in the original opinion. Particularly is it urged that in the case of Jones v. Male there wa.s an equitable title in Mrs. Jones sufficient to support a homestead claim prior to the creation of the fictitious li,en. This language is used in the motion:
“We believe in the Jones Case she had an equitable title which she could have enforced, even though at the time she purchased the property a deed was not made. They entered upon the place and started certain improvements. Such action on their part would have taken the case out of the statute of fraud, and they could have had specific performance of the sale of the property.”
The able jurist who wrote the opinion in that case was careful to state the fact that no equitable title was owned or held by Jones and wife prior to the execution of the deed to them, and that no action for specific performance would lie, as disclosed *129in the following quotations taken from that opinion:
“The homestead rights of plaintiffs in error could not attach to the lot until they had acquired a title thereto.”
“The improvements made were not permanent and valuable. They were slight and inconsiderable, and were not such as to authorize plaintiffs in error to maintain an action for the specific performance of the parol contract to convey the lot.”
The distinction there drawn applies to all of the cases relied upon by appellee. The question to our minds is plain. Under the Constitution, fictitious liens of the character of the one involved in the instant case are void. The only way any effect can be given to such void liens is by an estoppel effective against both the husband and wife. In the cases relied upon by appellee, the question presented in this case does not arise, because no title existed as the basis of a homestead claim prior to the execution of the deed which retained the lien. In those cases a fictitious lien was not created against a homestead, but was created against a tract of land in which there was no homestead claim, because no title supporting ¡same. In the instant case the homestead right of inter-vener attached prior to the creation of the fictitious lien, because she and her husband were at that time in actual possession of the premises under an equitable title thereto, whioh is sufficient to support a homestead claim. The facts distinguish this case clearly from those relied upon by appellee and bring it squarely within the holding of the case of Texas Land & Mortgage Co. v. Cooper (Tex. Civ. App.) 67 S. W. 173. To our minds the holding that a fictitious lien can be foreclosed against a homestead in the absence of an estoppel would be tantamount to a holding that a plain provision of the Constitution protecting the homestead of a family must yield to a statutory provision protecting innocent purchasers of negotiable paper.
The motion will be overruled.