Simmons v. Simmons

SLOSS, J.

The defendant appeals from a judgment whereby plaintiff recovered of defendant the sum of one thousand dollars, with interest. The evidence is brought up by a bill of exceptions.

The nature of the action is fairly defined in the following statement, made by plaintiff’s counsel at the opening of the trial. “This,” it was said, “is a suit brought by the plaintiff ¡to obtain the decree of this court to the effect that certain property is community property. The legal title is in the wife. The husband is plaintiff. He seeks the decree of this (the superior) court that the property is community property by virtue of an agreement between the parties at the time when he put in some five or six thousand dollars into the property.”

The complaint alleges that the parties are husband and wife, having intermarried in April, 1906. At the time of the marriage, the defendant owned, as her separate property, a lot of land in the city of Long Beach. The lot, with the improvements thereon, was worth about four thousand dollars, and was subject to an encumbrance of one thousand five hundred dollars. At the time of the marriage, it is alleged, the parties agreed that plaintiff would furnish to defendant moneys equal to the value of her said lot, less the encumbrance thereon, with which to build a dwelling-house on said lot, and that the lot with such house and other improvements, should thereafter be the community property of plaintiff and defendant. The plaintiff alleges that he has performed the agreement on his part, that he furnished the defendant with about five thousand six hundred dollars, with which she erected a dwelling-

[440]

house on the lot, but that the defendant repudiates the agreement, denies that the lot is community property and claims that it, with the improvements, is her separate property, and that plaintiff has no interest therein. The prayer is for judgment that the lot is community property, that defendant be enjoined from selling or encumbering the same, and for general relief.

By her answer, the defendant alleges that the lot, at the time of the marriage, was worth six thousand five hundred dollars, and denies the making of the agreement set up in the complaint. She alleges that after the marriage, the plaintiff made various gifts of money to her, and that she used a portion of said moneys in the erection of a dwelling-house on said lot, and that it was understood that the house so erected should become a part of the land, and be defendant’s separate estate. The answer admits that defendant has used a part of the moneys given her by plaintiff in erecting a house on the lot, admits that she claims said lot and improvements as her separate property and that she denies that plaintiff has any interest therein.