Court Opinion

ID: 9866024
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-26 00:07:34.226662+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:08:57.112828
License: Public Domain

EDEIOTT, Judge
(dissenting).
The -facts of this case are as stated in the opinion of the majority of the court. Mrs. Ellie Brown, intervener and third opponent, inherited from her parents $154.32, which passed into the hands of her husband. George A. Brown, her husband, added to it enough to make $586.08 cash, with which the parties' say in their agreement, and upon which we are called on to decide the case, that “he purchased the ear under seizure from H. E. Werner in his wife’s name.” The lower court, acting on the agreement, sustained the right of the plaintiff, a creditor of the husband, to seize the automobile for a community debt.
The agreement further says that the husband and wife both testified that the automobile was delivered to the wife as a gift; that the husband delivered it to her as her car, a gift from him. The majority opinion holds that the automobile was a gift from the husband to the wife, and maintains it as such under the agreement, reversing and setting aside the judgment appealed from.
I differ with the majority of the court in the application of the agreement. I agree that the husband can make a donation of community property to his wife as was held in Succession of Williams, etc., 171 La. 151, 129 So. 801, but I contend ’ that, under the terms of the agreement .showing the facts, *88that the wife, Mrs. Brown, did not acquire the title which she sets up to this automobile as a gift from her husband; the husband and wife cannot make a purchase in her name a gift by testifying and agreeing that it was a gift and calling it such from himself. The agreement showing how it was acquired says that her husband purchased it in her name from Werner. As I see it, she claims ownership under the purchase from Werner and not as-a gift from her husband. I look on the automobile as a community purchase. “This partnership or community consists, ⅜ * • * of the estate which they may acquire during the marriage, * * * by purchase, * * * even although the purchase be only in the name of one of the two and not of both, because in that case the period of time when the purchase is made is alone attended to, and not the person who made the purchase.” Civ. Code, art. 2402.
X think the judgment appealed from correct, and that it should be affirmed.