Snyder v. Webb
Before: Heydenfeldt
Synopsis
The Practice Act gives to a married woman the right to sue without her husband, where the action concerns her separate estate.
Under the act, property owned by the wife before marriage, and that acquired afterwards by gift, bequest, devise, or descent, shall be her separate property.
The rents and profits of the separate property are declared to be common property.
The act governs if there be no marriage contract containing stipulations contrary thereto.
The act confers on the parties, before marriage, an unlimited right to make whatever stipulations they may agree upon in respect to property, and this is not confined to property in esse, but contemplates property to be acquired, and the rents and profits of the present estate.
Our statute does not dispense with the interposition of trustees to protect the wife, except with respect to.the property specified in the act. In all other respects the common law remains unaltered, and the wife may resort to trustees for all purposes of security.
If the husband should take the rents and profits of her estate, he will he held to account for her benefit, to the same extent as if he had undertaken a specific trust.
The law which deprives a married woman of the right to make contracts is not altered by the statute, unless in respect of the property specified by it, and she cannot bring suit in her own name upon a contract which she was not authorized by the statute to make.
Heydenfeldt, Justice, delivered the opinion of the court. Wells, Justice, concurred.
Our Practice Act gives to a married woman the right to sue without her husband where the action concerns her separate property.
Under the acts defining the rights of husband and wife, the [87]property of “ the wife owned by her before marriage, and that acquired afterwards by gift, bequest, demise, or descent, shall be her separate property.”
The rents and profits of her separate property are declared to be common property.
The 14th section of the act provides, “In every marriage hereafter contracted in this State, the rights of husband and wife shall be governed by this act, unless there is a marriage contract containing stipulations contrary thereto.”
The record discloses that there was a marriage contract between the plaintiff and her husband, by which, notwithstanding the marriage, she was to have the entire management of her separate estate, that its rents and profits were also to be a part of her separate estate, as was also to be all property acquired by her after marriage, whether by purchase or otherwise.
It is now urged that the statute is in derogation of the common law, and must be strictly construed. That it confers no power on the wife to make contracts, and, therefore, she took nothing by her purchase from Palmer, Oooke & Co., or it enured to the benefit of her husband.
The 14th section of the act before cited, certainly confers upon parties an unlimited right to make before marriage what-, ever stipulations1 they may agree upon, in respect to property; and it is not confined to property in esse, because, as many of the provisions of the act refer to property to be acquired, and to the rents or profits of the present estate, it follows that it must contemplate a departure from these provisions by express contract, as well as from any other.
At common law the separate estate of a married woman was usually, if not always, created by the interposition of a trustee ; and the trustee had power, either ¡by the terms of the- covenant, or under the direction of the Court of Chancery, to invest all money arising from the rents and profits of the trust estate, when no other application of it was more beneficial to the wife.
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