Jenness v. Cutler’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

20 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 23 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Now, under such a state of facts, was the wife a surety? We suppose she might be said in one sense to be the surety for her husband, but in a very remote and attenuated sense, and not at all in the sense in which the word is used in the law. We suppose it may also be said that the wife has in one sense an estate in the homestead occupied by herself and husband, although the title to the same may be in her husband; but still, if it is an estate, it is such an estate as has never been defined by law, an estate unknown to the common law, technically no estate at all. The whole estate in such a case is in fact wholly in the husband, with merely a restriction for the benefit of his family upon his power to alienate the same. It is true, the wife has an interest in the homestead, a present and existing interest, an interest that will be protected by the courts; but it is simply an interest growing out of the marriage relation, and has no other or different foundation than the marriage relation and occupancy. It requires no instrument in writing to create such an interest, nor does it require any instrument in writing to destroy it. A merely going upon the premises, and occupying the same as a homestead, will create the interest. The abandonment of the premises as a homestead will destroy the interest. And if the wife should die while occupying the premises as a homestead she would have nothing that would descend to her heirs, or go to her executors or administrators, and nothing t”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Miners' Sav. Bank v. Sandy · Bennett v. Odneal

2. ““Now, notwithstanding this present and-existing interest of the wife in all the property of the husband, still no one has ever yet supposed that the wife was such a surety for her husband that if a creditor of her husband should, by a valid agreement, extend the time for the payment of her husband’s debt, that the creditor would thereby release all her husband’s property from the payment of such debt. Even in states where it is necessary for the wife to sign a mortgage of real estate not a homestead in order to bar her interest in such real estate, no one has ever yet supposed that, by such signing, she became such a surety for her husband that she was entitled to all the rights and privileges of other sureties. Indeed, it has never been held in any state that a wife could become a surety, entitled to all the rights and privileges of other sureties, unless she pledged some portion or all of her own separate property.” (p. 517.)”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Houska v. Lake