Court Opinion

ID: 9568615
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:05:44.941153+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:50:40.044924
License: Public Domain

Jordan, Justice,
dissenting. In my opinion the evidence presented on motion for summary judgment demanded a judgment for the defendant. I would affirm the trial court in so holding. The language in the loan applications and security deeds here involved clearly show the wife to be a co-maker and a co-obligor with her husband. "Where the husband and the wife sign a note jointly as joint principals, and there is nothing in the note to show that one is surety for the other, the presumption is that both are liable as joint principals. Lovelady v. Moss, 50 Ga. App. 652 (2 a) (179 SE 168). And where the .husband and the wife thus apparently unite their credit in the execution of a joint note, and where the creditor at the time the debt is created really intends in good faith to credit the husband and the wife jointly as principals in a joint undertaking, and not the husband as principal and the wife as surety, and the consideration for their promise passes legally and morally to the husband and the wife jointly without division, and where the writing executed is such as purports to bind them for the debt as their joint debt, then, whatever may be the private understanding between the wife and the husband, in which the creditor is not concerned, and in which he has no interest as to the disposition, by either the husband or the wife or both of them, of the consideration so received by them, the writing is to be treated as embracing the true substance of the contract. Morris v. International Agricultural Corp., 53 Ga. App. 517 (5) (186 SE 583); Daniel v. G. Ober & Sons. Co., supra.” Herron v. Interstate Life &c. Co., 55 Ga. App. 534, 538 (190 SE 631). See also, Dye v. Richards, 210 Ga. 601 (1) (81 SE2d 820).
In United States v. Frost, (MD Ga.) 149 FSupp., 386, 389, the court said "At the inception of this operation, neither the husband nor the wife was indebted to the Farmers Home Administration, that is, there was no pre-existing indebtedness. This indebtedness was incurred jointly by the two defendants and both of them are equally liable to the plaintiff. 'The contract of suretyship is one whereby a per*69son obligates himself to pay the debt of another . . Section 103-101, Georgia Code Annotated. Here the wife has not contracted to pay the debt of another, but has contracted to pay the joint debt of herself and her husband. Therefore, Section 53-503, Georgia Code Annotated, providing that 'she may not bind her separate estate by any contract of suretyship nor by any assumption of the debts of her husband,’ avails her nothing.”
Any decision of this court allowing a woman to dispute by parol testimony the clear and unmistakable written words of her contract should be overruled.
Women have come a long way in the realm of the law, beginning with and before the Married Woman’s Act of 1866 establishing their right to a separate estate. The law deemed it proper at that time to restrict the feme covert from entering into a contract of suretyship or the assumption of the debts of her husband which would bind her separate estate. Those restrictions have served whatever purpose they might have had and are no longer needed by the "weaker sex,” which has long since proved its ability to cope with the business world of the male.
The General Assembly recognized the phase of women’s liberation by the Amendment to Code § 53-503 in 1969 (Ga. L. 1969, pp. 72,73) which removed real estate from the restrictions under this statute by making it applicable only to contracts dealing with the wife’s "tangible personal property.”
The trend of statute and constitutional law is to prevent discrimination in any form against women because of their sex. By the same token there should be no discrimination in their favor because of their sex.
I am authorized to state that Justices Nichols and Gunter concur in this dissent.