Court Opinion

ID: 9762534
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:25:55.646539+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:35.301452
License: Public Domain

GRANT, Justice,
concurring.
This Court is bound by stare decisis to follow the Texas Supreme Court’s ruling in Raborn v. Davis, 33 Tex.Sup.Ct.J. 249 (Tex. Feb 21, 1990). I am not compelled by stare decisis, however, to agree with that opinion.
It is true that the term garnishment generally refers to a remedial statutory means by which a judgment creditor may enforce the collection of the money judgment from the nonexempt property of a judgment debtor in the hands of a third party.1 Beggs v. Fite, 130 Tex. 46, 106 S.W.2d 1039 (1937). Nevertheless, as Chief Justice Marshall stated in M’Culloch v. State of Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 579, 605 (1819), there is both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, and as Justice Douglas said in Markham v. Cabell, 326 U.S. 404, 409, 66 S.Ct. 193, 195, 90 L.Ed. 165, 168 (1945), “The policy as well as the letter of the law is a guide to decision." To hold that the turnover statute requires a worker to turn over his or her salary as soon as the worker has received it defies the spirit and policy of Article XVI, § 28, of the Texas Constitution.
The prohibition against garnishment of current wages first appeared in the 1876 Constitution and has remained unchanged since that time, except for the amendment allowing garnishment of wages for child support.2 The statute exempting current wages for personal services, now Section 42.002 of the Texas Property Code, can be traced back to 1858.
The exemption law should be liberally construed to allow a worker a means of obtaining a livelihood and thus prevent him and his family from becoming a charge on the public. J.M. Radford Grocery Co. v. McKean, 41 S.W.2d 639 (Tex.Civ.App.-Fort Worth 1931, no writ). The exemption of current wages belonging to the family was provided to enable the wage earner to purchase the necessities of life for his dependents and for himself.
In Rabom, the Supreme Court held that garnishment involves a third person. The Court therefore concluded that the turnover order, which did not involve a third person, did not violate the Constitutional provision. Section 42.002(8) of the Texas Property Code lists as exempt “current wages for personal services” and does not use the word garnishment.
Although the Supreme Court did not specifically refer to these statutes in Raborn, the Court’s definition of current wages destroys the purpose of the exemption law. In Rabom the Supreme Court stated, “[A] *523paycheck in the hands of the judgment debtor is no longer current wages.” The Court could have allowed the legislation to serve the purpose for which it was enacted by defining current to mean “the most recent.” See Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary 316 (1985). This would have classified the salary payment as current wages until the worker’s next payday and thus would have protected the funds and the basic needs of debtors and their families.
In Roco v. Green, 50 Tex. 483, 488 (1878), the Supreme Court said, “[T]he State has thought to encourage that [family] relation by protecting it from absolute want, arising from the vicissitudes of life.” The vicissitudes of life have not vanished and are as real as they were in 1878.
I concur in this opinion because of the Supreme Court decision in Rabom, but for the reasons stated, I disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision in Rabom.

. This Court pointed that out in Goad v. Goad, 768 S.W.2d 356, 358 (Tex.App.-Texarkana 1989, writ denied).

. All fifty states and the District of Columbia have statutes concerning garnishment of wages. 2 G. Braden, The Constitution of the State of Texas: An Annotated and Comparative Analysis, at 760 (1977).