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29 S.C. 426

Greig v. Smith

Supreme Court of South Carolina

Decided October 12, 1888

Supreme Court of South Carolina · decided 1888-10-12

Before Fraser, J., Anderson, The master’s report was as follows: All the issues of law and fact in this case having been referred to me to hear and determine, I beg leave to submit the following as my conclusions of law and fact : The plaintiffs by this action seek to foreclose a mortgage executed by Savannah M. Smith on February^, 1885, the consideration of which is set out on the face of the mortgage and the bond secured by said mortgage as being one thousand dollars, to…

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1888-10-12

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently February 1941

1 federal appellate · 2 state decisions

301888189019001910192019301940decided

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.

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Mr. Chiei? Justice Simpson,

¶1dissenting. A married woman has the power under the constitution to “bequeath, devise, or alienate her property, real or personal, held by her at the time of her marriage or acquired thereafter, either by gift, grant, inheritance, devise, or otherwise,” and which has become her separate estate under said-constitution. She has also the power under an act of the general assembly (section 2037, General Statutes) to purchase any species of property in her own name, and to take proper legal conveyances therefor, “and to contract and be contracted with as to her separate property in the same manner as if she were unmarried” — these latter words being the words of the act, at the time of the transaction involved in the case before the court. Her common law disabilities had not been removed, except to the extent above, when the note and mortgage below were executed.

¶2Now, it does not seem to me that the note and mortgage in question was either a “devise, bequest, or alienation of her separate estate” under the constitution ; nor was it a purchase of property by her in the sense of the act authorizing her to purchase any species of property. Nor was it a contract under the act and the decisions of this court with reference to her separate estate. I find it impossible, therefore, to concur in this opinion. The transaction below appears to me to be nothing more than a borrowing, in substance, of money by the husband writh his wife as security, or rather advances made to the husband for his own benefit, and upon the credit of the wife’s separate estate. And the effort here, in truth and in fact, is to make the wdfe’s separate estate liable for the debt of the husband, the very thing which the constitution sternly inhibits.

¶3Judgment modified.

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