Taliaferro v. Taliaferro

DRAPER, P. J.

These consolidated quiet title actions raise issues as to the applicability of the parties’ 1943 property settlement agreement to numerous parcels of real estate. Plaintiff husband’s title was quieted in several parcels found to have been acquired after the agreement. The remaining parcels were decreed to be subject to that agreement. Plaintiff appeals. Since the wife does not, only the parcels found to be subject to the agreement are in issue here.

In view of the welter of appeals generated by this divorce and agreement

(Taliaferro

v.

Taliaferro,

203 Cal.App.2d

[213]

642 [21 Cal.Rptr. 864]; 203 Cal.App.2d 649 [21 Cal.Rptr. 868]; 203 Cal.App.2d 652 [21 Cal.Rptr. 870]; 200 Cal.App.2d 190 [19 Cal.Rptr. 220] and eases there collected at p. 191, fn. 1) it is surprising that a partially new issue remains for decision.

In dividing “the community property of the parties,” the agreement specifies the rights of each in “the real estate belonging to the parties,” but fails to describe or list the properties constituting such real estate. The parcels dead with in this appeal were acquired in 1941 and 1942. The parties were married in 1927 and the property settlement agreement was signed in December 1943.

Husband asserts that he had several thousand dollars when the parties were married, and that the real estate in issue was purchased from those separate funds. But there is testimony that: husband, when charged with crime about 1932, had no funds to employ the attorney he desired; during his confinement in prison he had no funds for such purchases as were there allowed, and his wife furnished such sums from her earnings; he, his wife and their children received county welfare aid after his release; he filed a petition in bankruptcy in 1936 and was discharged in 1937. Thus there is ample evidence that the properties purchased in 1941-42 were bought with funds which, having been acquired during marriage, are presumed to be community property (Civ. Code, § 164). It follows that there is support for the finding that the lands were community property.