Court Opinion

ID: 9827610
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 17:41:58.752541+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:33.764614
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
The lower court adjudged that ap-pellee was “entitled to an allowance of $1,000 to be paid out of the funds of said estate as an allowance for one year’s support of herself, and in lieu of non-existing exempt personal property.” It thus appears that the allowance of $1,000 to appellee was (1) for one year’s support, and (2) “in lieu of non-existing exempt personal property.” On the undisputed evidence, appellee has as her separate property $6,400 in cash, and certain other property. It is our conclusion that under Art. 3478: “No such allowance shall be made for the widow when she has separate property adequate to her maintenance; nor shall such allowance be made for the minor children when they have property in their own right adequate to their maintenance,” appellee was not entitled to an allowance for one year’s support.
Appellant insists that appellee was not entitled to an allowance “in lieu of non-existing exempt property,” on. the ground that “by the very terms of her written application as filed in the county court she excluded herself from any allowance for exempt articles not found among the effects of the deceased.” The most that can be said in support of this contention by appellant is that her application was subject to the construction that she did not claim the allowance for non-existing exempt property. In Mays v. Mays, cited in the original opinion, construing Articles 3485, 3486, and 3487, we quoted with approval from Connell v. Chandler, 11 Tex. 249, the following proposition:
“The law, in its terms, makes the duty absolute and imperative, and fixes the time of its performance. No formal application, therefore, is necessary, to render it obligatory upon the Chief Justice, to make the prescribed provisions.” [43 S.W.2d 306, 307.]
So, it is our conclusion that the court did not err in awarding the allowance to ap-pellee in lieu of non-existing exempt property.
We sustain the following proposition advanced by appellant on rehearing: “Having decided that appellee, under and by virtue of Articles 3485, 3486 and 3487, *972Revised Civil Statutes of Texas, 1925, is entitled to an allowance for exempt articles not found among the effects of the deceased, this Court should have reformed the lower court’s judgment .so as to reduce the amount of such allowance from $1,000 to $500 as required by Article 3487; and this Court erred in not so doing.”
It is therefore our order that appellee be awarded nothing as an allowance for one year’s support, and on' appellant’s second assignment of error copied above, that she be awarded $500 ’in lieu of non-existing exempt property.
Appellant’s motion for. rehearing granted in part, and in part overruled.