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41 Cal. 239

Hussey v. Castle

California Supreme Court

Decided July 1, 1871

California Supreme Court · decided 1871-07-01

The complaint averred that the plaintiff was the wife of J. C. Hussey, with whom she intermarried in the State of Iowa, on the 9th day of December, 1869, while temporarily absent from California, which was their domicile; and that pursuant to an ante-nuptial contract between the parties, and in consideration of marriage, and of five thousand dollars in coin, due by said J. C. Hussey to the plaintiff before their marriage (two thousand of which was secured by mortgage on the…

Cited in Bouvier (1914)’s definition of “Ante-Nuptial Contract”

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1871-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently August 1963

11 state decisions

201871188018901900191019201930194019501960decided

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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By the Court, Sprague, J.:

¶1The demurrer to the complaint should have been overruled.

¶2There is no legal presumption that the conveyance of the premises described in the complaint, by J. C. Hussey, the husband of the plaintiff, to her, of February 15th, 1870, was fraudulent as against the party now seeking to sell the same in satisfaction of a judgment against the husband of plaintiff, obtained more than three months after such conveyance, even though the husband had made the same as a voluntary conveyance to, or settlement upon, his wife, the plaintiff; and clearly, under the circumstances attending the conveyance, and the substantial money considerations therefor, alleged in the complaint, no presumption of fraud, as against subsequent judgment creditors of the husband, arises; nor does the presumption arise, from a conveyance of the separate property of the husband to the wife, in consideration of money passing from the wife, which was her separate property, that the property thus conveyed becomes the common property of the husband and wife.

¶3*242The money alleged to have been the consideration for the conveyance relieves the same from the imputation of being a voluntary conveyance, independent of the ante-nuptial verbal contract. And further, as the ante-nuptial contract is alleged to have been completely executed, the same is not assailable by the parties thereto, or by third parties, on the ground that it was not in writing, as prescribed by statute.

¶4Judgment and order dissolving the injunction reversed, with directions to the Court below to overrule the demurrer to the complaint.

¶5Reither Mr. Justice Wallace nor Mr. Justice Crockett expressed an opinion.

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