Court Opinion

ID: 9828553
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 18:29:14.186435+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:50.356502
License: Public Domain

Appellants’ Motion for Rehearing Denied.
In a very able motion for rehearing filed by counsel for appellant it is earnestly insisted that we erred in holding in our former opinion herein that the title acquired by possession under the 10-year statute by appellant R. P. Brown and wife was community property and not the separate property of Mrs. Brown. In support of this contention, appellant cites the case of Alford Bros. v. Williams, 41 Tex. Civ. App. 436, 91 S. W. 636, decided by this court, and in which the opinion was written by the writer of this opinion. That opinion is in direct conflict with our present holding, but we regard it as also in conflict with the rule now recognized by the courts of this state. That case did not reach the Supreme Court, but the case of Ry. Co. v. Speights, 59 S. W. 572, cited in the opinion as authority for our holding, did reach that court, and our decision upon the question here involved was not affirmed; the court stating in its opinion that it was unnecessary to decide the question. In subsequent cases from this and other Courts of Civil Appeals a contrary rule to that announced by us in the Alford Case has been followed, and the writer has reached the conclusion that the rule announced in the Alford Case is not the correct rule. The deed to Mrs. Brown from one who held no title vested in her no right in the land as against the owners of the title, and, up to the very time that the 10 years’ possession by herself and husband was completed, she had no title to the land and no right of any kind in the land as against the owners of the title. How, then, can it be said that the deed to her was the inception of the title afterwards acquired by herself and husband by their 10 years’ occupancy and claim to the land? As the title to the land was acquired during the existence of the marriage relation, and did not have its inception in any right acquired *790by Mrs. Brown before her marriage, we think it should be held to be community property. Bishop v. Lusk, 8 Tex. Civ. App. 30, 27 S. W. 306; Cook v. Houston Oil Co., 154 S. W. 281. As pointed out in the Cook Case, the holding in the ease of Bishop v. Lusk is apparently approved by our Supreme Court in the case of Creamer v. Briscoe, 101 Tex. 494, 109 S. W. 911, 7 L. R. A. (N. S.) 154, 130 Am. St. Rep. 869.
We adhere to the conclusions expressed in our main opinion updn all of the questions presented by the motion for rehearing, and it follows that the motion is overruled.