Court Opinion

ID: 9832920
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 22:18:02.334252+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:55.395288
License: Public Domain

ON REHEARING.
STEPHENS, Associate Justice.
This suit was instituted by the heirs of John D. Womack, Jr., and of his sister Archie Womack, in trespass to try title and for partition, against appellant, E. L. Dohoney, to recover and partition 825-|- acres of land of the S. M. Fulton survey, in Lamar County. From a judgment in favor of plaintiffs below this appeal was taken. There was a trial without a jury, and the record contains conclusions of law and fact and a statement of facts. These we have carefully examined, and conclude that the evidence introduced warranted the conclusions of fact derived therefrom by the trial court; therefore they are adopted as our conclusions of fact. At the last Austin Term of our Supreme Court, by an opinion of the Commission of Appeals, adopted the 24tli of May, 1892, the judgment was reversed and the cause remanded for a'new trial; but a rehearing was granted. All the questions raised were decided against appellant except the one upon which the judgment was reversed, to-wit, that there was error in excluding from the evidence a deed from Archie Womack to J. W. Wooldridge, which contained the following description of the land conveyed:
“All my right, title, and interest in and to 100 acres of land, to be selected by him, the said John W. Wooldridge, out of any part of a certain tract or parcel of land belonging to me, containing 825 acres, lying in said county of Lamar, north from the city of Paris, on Red River, of the headright of one Fulton.”
The ground of exclusion was that the deed was void for uncertainty of description.
We are clearly of opinion that, without overturning a long line of decisions, this deed, being a voluntary as distinguished from a compulsory conveyance, can not be held, from what appears on its face, to be void. Our conclusion therefore is, that the court erred in excluding it on this ground; but whether this error, under the pleadings and proof disclosed by the record, requires a reversal of the judgment, we have found difficulty in deciding.
When this instrument was executed Archie Womack owned only an undivided interest in the land. If, therefore, her deed had described by metes and bounds any specific portion of the 825 acres, it would have been voidable as against her cotenants, but valid and effectual, it seems, *362to bind, by estoppel at least, her interest in such specific portion. McKey v. Welch, 22 Texas, 397, and cases cited; March v. Huyter, 50 Texas, 251, and cases cited. See also cases cited below from California and Massachusetts.
If appellant had offered the deed as a conveyance of any specific portion of the land in virtue of a selection made, as therein provided, by Wooldridge, or with a view of asserting the right of selection in the partition proceedings, its exclusion at the instance of the other cotenants would not have been material error, especially as there were no pleadings to justify its admission for such purposes. McKey v. Welch, 22 Texas, 397; Peak v. Brinson, 71 Texas, 310. .
But on the theory that appellant or his vendors waived this alleged right of selection, it seems to us that the deed should have been admitted against those claiming under Archie Womack, as a conveyance of an undivided interest in the land. We think a proper construction of the instrument gives it the effect of a conveyance of an undivided interest of 100 acres in the share of Archie Womack in the 825 acres tract, with the privilege of selection — whether valid or not — superadded. We can not distinguish it in principle from the conveyance of an undivided half, third, or other fractional interest, coupled with the privilege of selecting it out of certain specified parts of the land. We are of opinion,that the courts of Massachusetts and California (and doubtless of other States), have announced the correct rule, which may be stated thus: When a deed conveys a certain number of acres, without describing the land conveyed, to be taken out of a larger tract described, the grantee becomes by his deed a tenant in common, having a fractional interest represented by a fraction whose denominator is a number equal to the number of acres in the larger tract described, and whose numerator is a number equal to the number of acres conveyed. The grantee acquires such fractional interest in every acre of the larger tract. Wallace v. Miller, 52 Cal., 655; Lawrence v. Ballow, 37 Cal., 518; Schenk v. Evoy, 24 Cal., 104; Gibbs v. Swift, 12 Cush., 377, 378; Brown v. Bailey, 1 Metc., 254.
In the last case cited, in which a one-fifth interest in a homestead tract of land was devised, to be taken where the devisee should choose, Chief Justice Shaw, delivering the opinion of the court, said: “ These words do not constitute a "condition precedent to the vesting of the estate, .but a right or privilege superadded to the devise, to be exercised or not, at the will of the devisee, upon partition. Consequently Mather [devisee] became entitled as tenant in common under the devise upon the decease of his father” [devisor].
We conclude that the deed in question conveyed such interest in, the land as should have been disposed of in the partition suit. It is not believed that this conclusion is necessarily in conflict with Dull v. Blum, 68 *363Texas, 299, though one or two expressions in the opinion in that case might be construed to announce a different rule.
Delivered November 22, 1892.
We adopt the entire opinion heretofore rendered in this case; accordingly, the judgment will be reversed and the cause remanded for further proceedings in accordance with the opinion here announced and adopted.

Reversed and remanded.

Motion for rehearing refused.