Court Opinion

ID: 9764423
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:21:18.620962+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:56.382219
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE GRIFFIN
joined by JUSTICE SMITH, dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
March 2, 1961, on the hearing for temporary injunction, the temporary injunction restraining relator from disposing of any of the community property was granted as prayed for. As to the $21,000.00 proceeds of the sale of the alleged community property, the court “after full hearing of all the evidence” found that relator did not, as testified by him, flush two-hundred-ten $100 bills — which he had secured from the proceeds of the sale and had in his possession after said sale — down the toilet at Ft. Worth Club. The court further ordered relator to produce said sum of $21,000.00 on or before March 9, 1961, at 10:00 a.m. and to pay the same into the registry of the court, pending final hearing.
At the March 9, 1961, hearing the court found that relator failed to produce the $21,000.00 or any part thereof, or to pay same into the registry of the court; and that relator had purposely and openly violated the order of the court. The court then said: “It is therefore ordered by the Court that the said defendant William C. Preston, Jr., be and he is hereby held in contempt of Court with relation to the matters referred to above, but consideration and determination of what action the Court shall take in connection with said contempt is hereby deferred until hearing of this case upon its merits which hearing is set for April 3, 1961.” (Emphasis added.)
On April 3, 1961, the hearing was had and the court on April 13, 1961, gave judgment for divorce, and divided the property between the parties. The wife was awarded “The sum of $10,000.00 in cash, which the Court hereby orders the defendant (relator herein) to produce as hereinafter set forth.” With regard to the $21,000.00 the court held relator in contempt and, as punishment for the contempt, ordered that relator for his *389failure to produce the $21,000.00 be confined in the Tarrant County jail for a period of three full days of twenty-four hours each. The record shows that the relator has served this part of the contempt judgment. However, this judgment contained the further provision that relator “be held and confined until he shall have produced and delivered to the Clerk of this [the trial] Court, for the use and benefit of the plaintiff, the said sum of $10,000.00, whereupon he shall have purged himself of contempt of this Court.” It was under this last provision that relator was kept confined after the expiration of the three day term. It is from this latter provision that relator seeks relief.
I agree that the trial court in a divorce case has the jurisdiction and power to divide the community assets between the parties and to require either spouse to bring such community assets into the registry of the court; or if a domestic judgment, to require proper instruments of transfer and conveyance to be executed. Failure to comply with the court’s order can be punished by contempt. However, in this case, the trial court assessed a penalty of three days confinement in the Tarrant County jail for the failure of relator to obey his orders to bring the $21,000.00 into court.
The $10,000.00 is a separate and distinct item from the $21,000.00 and was so treated by the trial court. An additional punishment was directed by the trial judge in an effort to have the $10,000.00 paid to the wife of relator. The trial court having seen fit to separate the two items, I do not see how we can set aside such action and say it is only one item of $21,000.00.
I can not get around the statement in Ex parte Prickett, 1958, 159 Tex. 302, 320 S.W. 2d 1, that: “The contempt order, for all practical purposes, may be taken as merely one of enforcement of the decreed property division as distinguished from punishment.” In the Prickett case the order was for the defendant husband to deliver to his divorced wife (or to pay her the value of) certain stock certificates representing forty-odd shares of Humble Oil & Refining Company stock, which the divorce decree had awarded to her in the division of the community property.
Rule 308, T.R.C.P., has no application whatever to the case at bar. To say this court would hold a judgment of contempt void and discharge the relator, just because Prickett relied on Rule 308 — when we would have remanded Prickett to custody *390had he sought relief from the order to deliver to the wife the shares of Humble stock — is not logical or realistic. Shares of stock would be much more subject to a specific order of delivery than a debt for a sum of money.
The $10,000.00 item constitutes a debt which the trial court has .adjudged against the relator in favor of his wife in the division of the community property of the parties. The contempt order regarding the $10,000.00 is an attempt to collect this indebtedness by the confinement of relator until same is paid. Article 1, Section 18 of the Texas Constitution provides “No person shall never be imprisoned for debt.”
The trial court had no power to confine relator until he has paid the $10,000.00 awarded the wife by the divorce decree.
I would enlarge the relator and discharge him from the contempt judgment.