Court Opinion

ID: 9771214
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:37:06.079974+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:38:13.995556
License: Public Domain

KOEHLER, Justice,
concurring.
I write this concurrence only because I take exception to the dissenting justice’s statement that the majority opinion is unfair, illogical, lacking in common sense, and at odds with the intention of the New Mexico Legislature. The majority is following the law as it is, or in this case as it was, not what we would like it to be or what one person perceives to be the “more sensible” approach. Although we in the judicial profession always hope that the results we reach as we apply the law to various fact situations will be fair, logical, and sensible, we recognize that this is not always the case. In any given case, however, what one interested person perceives to be fair, logical, and sensible, may not seem that way to another interested person.
In the instant ease, the facts are clear that the real property involved was community property at the time the contract was entered into in 1990 and that Jones signed the contract as husband’s agent only. Under the only reasonable reading of Section 40-3-13(A) of the New Mexico Statutes as it read in 1990, an attempted contract to convey community property not joined in by one of the spouses was void. By any logical syllogism, the conclusion must be that the contract in this case was void. Moreover, while the legislative intent behind the statute in question was to protect a spouse’s interest in community property, it is possible that it was also intended and just as sensible to conclude that a buyer should be protected from unscrupulous sellers of community property who conveniently fail to inform the buyer of the property’s community status and to have both spouses join until they can determine whether they want to go ahead with the deal.1
It is also an established fact that the amendment to Section 40-3-13(A) of the New Mexico Statutes allowing for ratification by the nonsigning spouse was not adopted by the New Mexico Legislature until 1993. The New Mexico Constitution, Article II, Section 19, provides that “[n]o ... law impairing the obligation of contracts shall be enacted by the legislature.” To give the ratification amendment (which makes a substantive change in the law) a retroactive effect, as advocated by the dissent, would in this writer’s opinion, be unconstitutional.2

. One might well wonder in this case why any astute business man who owned oil properties in New Mexico would fail to have his wife join in a contract to convey community real property unless he wished to keep his options open.

. The dissent inappropriately cites Otero v. Wheeler, 102 N.M. 770, 701 P.2d 369 (1985) as a case upholding a void contract, not signed by the wife, on the ground that she later ratified it. In that case, the husband had in his possession his wife's validly executed power of attorney but failed to sign the contract as agent for his wife. The buyer knew of the wife’s power of attorney and the wife, although she knew of the transaction at the time and accepted benefits from it, later attempted to repudiate it. Because the husband had her power of attorney and merely failed to indicate his dual capacity in signing the contract, the contract was not considered void. In our case, there is no claim that either Hartman or Jones had a validly executed and recorded power of attorney from Margaret Hartman.