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620 S.W.2d 748

Williams v. Williams

Court of Appeals of Texas

Decided July 6, 1981

Court of Appeals of Texas · decided 1981-07-06

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“That the divorce court may have awarded appellant’s separate property to appel-lee and that the divorce court may have rendered judgment without the joinder of the life tenant, even if the judgment was erroneous in these respects, does not render the judgment void. If the trial court erred, the error was one of substantive law to be remedied by appeal.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Putegnat v. Putegnat

Relies on Templeton v. Ferguson · 37 Tex. Civ. App. 85 - Newman v. MacKey · King v. King

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1981-07-06

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently November 2000

7 state decisions

50198119902000decided

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 →

STOREY, Justice.

¶1 Nancy Williams sued and obtained judgment against her former husband, Benjamin Williams, for amounts due on a prior judgment for divorce rendered on February 22, 1971. The appeal centers upon whether the judgment on which this action is brought is void as an attempt to divest appellant of his separate property, namely, benefits under the Army and Air Force Exchange Service Retirement Pension Plan. 1 We affirm on the ground that the earlier judgment is not void so as to be subject to collateral attack in the present suit.

¶2 A defense to a judgment debt on the ground that the prior judgment is erroneous is a collateral attack [see Newman v. Mackey, 37 Tex.Civ.App. 85, 83 S.W. 31 (1904, writ dism’d)]; and a collateral attack may be maintained only on a void judgment. Templeton v. Ferguson, 89 Tex. 47, 33 S.W. 329 (1895). A judgment based upon erroneous holdings as to substantive law is not void. See Hodges, Collateral Attacks on Judgments, (pt. 2), 41 Texas L. Rev. 499, 521 (1963), and cases cited therein at note 188. That the prior judgment may have awarded appellant’s separate property to appellee, even if the judgment was erroneous in this respect, does not render the judgment void. If the trial court erred, the error was one of substantive law to be remedied by appeal. King v. King, 291 S.W. 645 (Tex.Civ.App.—San Antonio 1927, writ dism’d). Consequently, the prior judgment is not subject to collateral attack in this suit.

¶3 We have examined appellant’s remaining contentions and conclude that they are likewise without merit.

¶4 Affirmed.

1

¶5 . While the 1971 decree also set aside to plaintiff an 8/21 interest in defendant’s military retirement, this suit, and therefor the judgment appealed from, deals only with an accounting of and judgment for the plaintiffs interest in defendant’s A.A.F.E.S. Pension. The A.A.F.E.S. plan is not a congressionally mandated plan.

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