Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

136 Cal. 113

68 P 488

Burrows v. Burrows

California Supreme Court

Decided March 21, 1902

California Supreme Court · decided 1902-03-21

<p>Estates op Deceased Persons—Order Setting Apart Homestead to Widow—Limited Period—Separate Property.—A'homestead declared by the wife upon the separate property of the husband, in his lifetime, is properly set apart from his estate, after his death, to the widow, for a limited period only.</p> <p>Id.—Separate Property op Husband—Support op Finding.—A finding made upon the order limiting the homestead, that the land upon which it was declared by the wife was the husband’s separate property, and purchased with his separate money, is sustained by proof that the wife had no separate property, and that at the time of the marriage the husband owned a farm in Kansas, which was afterward sold, and the money reinvested in other farms successively, each of which was sold and reinvestment made, and that upon final sale of all of his Kansas property the homestead in California was purchased from the proceeds of such sale.</p> <p>Id.—Law op Property Acquired in Kansas.—It seems that all property acquired by the husband in the state of Kansas, whether acquired before or after marriage, was by the law of that state the separate property of the husband, and, if so, it could not lose its character as such when brought into this state and invested here.</p>

Relies on Kraemer v. Kraemer

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1902-03-21

How this case has been cited

Cited by 21 later decisions — most recently March 1966

20 state decisions

701902191019201930194019501960decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

TEMPLE, J., concurring.

¶1 I concur in the judgment. I have no doubt as to the rule declared in Kraemer v. Kraemer, 52 Cal. 302. There is no community property in Kansas. The wife may have her separate property, but there is no such thing as a separate estate of the husband as distinguished from common or community property. All the property belonging to him is therefore as completely his as is the separate property of the husband here. By the law of Kansas, the husband cannot without the consent of the wife dispose of his real estate, nor can he devise it so as to deprive her of her *116 right of inheritance to one half of it. The wife in this case did consent to dispose of the homestead, and it was converted into money, as was also other land belonging to him. All accumulations made after marriage in Kansas were his. If not, then the husband there has no property in which his wife is not part owner, for the law of that state makes no distinction between the property belonging to the husband before and still owned after marriage and that acquired after marriage. All he had in Kansas belonged to him and was his separate property when he arrived in California, no matter whether it was acquired in Kansas before or after marriage.

¶2 The wife never had separate property, even if judged by the law of California. But even though, she had been possessed of means when she married, if by the law of Kansas the title to it had passed to the husband, and was fully his property by the law of that state, that too, in my opinion, would here be his separate property. He started from Kansas with money which was wholly his; I fail to see how the ownership was or could be changed by its removal here.

¶3 It is not a question of succession. By the Kansas law she would have inherited certain interests in his estate had he died there. Instead of proving that in Kansas she owned an interest in the property, it proves the contrary. It was his, or she could not have inherited it from him. Her only protection was, that he could not dispose of it without her consent and could not deprive her by. his will of all her rights as heir in case of his death.

/136/cal/113 · .json · Public domain