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21 Tex. 229

Lynch v. Elkes

Texas Supreme Court

Decided July 1, 1858

Texas Supreme Court · decided 1858-07-01

Error from Brazoria. Tried below before Hon. J. H. Bell. The plaintiff in error purchased a tract of land and gave her own and her husband’s two several notes for the purchase money, with a lien on the land, falling due at different times. The first note falling clue suit was commenced on it, and a judgment rendered on it against them and other endorsers, and a decree ordering a sale of the land to satisfy the lien.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““There was no proof that the land purchased was to be her separate property, and, if there had been, courts would not allow .the whole, perhaps, of her separate estate to be sacrificed in attempts to make additional purchases without proof of benefit or advantage, and with the certainty in fact of detriment and loss. I shall not enter into the discussion of the liabilities of married women. It is manifest at a glance that if obligations of this character were enforced against the property generally of a feme covert, she might be suddenly reduced to penury, and the shield of her disability be rendered wholly worthless, if not converted into an instrument for her destruction.””

quoted by 2 later decisions, including Johnson v. Scott, Sommers v. Kramer

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1858-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently June 1936

11 state decisions

50185818601870188018901900191019201930decided

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 →

Hemphill, Cii. J.

¶1We are of opinion that there was no" error in decreeing the sale of the land for the satisfaction of the vendor’s lien. The payment of the purchase money of the land was by two distinct notes, and the vendor's lien on each was equivalent to a mortgage, subject to forfeiture on the failure to pay the notes or either of them. There was error however in a point not suggested by appellants, and that is in rendering any judgment against the wife except for the foreclosure of the lion upon the land. There was no proof that the land purchased was to be her separate property, and, if there had been, Courts would not allow the whole, perhaps, of her separate estate to be sacrificed in attempts to make additional purchases without proof of benefit or advantage, and with the certainty in fact of detriment and loss. I shall not enter into the discussion of the liabilities of married women. It is manifest at a glance that if obligations of this character were enforced against the property generally of a feme covert, she might be suddenly reduced to penury and the shield of her disability be rendered wholly worthless if not converted into an instrument for her destruction.

¶2Judgment to be rendered against the wife only to the extent of foreclosure of the lien upon the land.

¶3Judgment reformed.

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