Beaman v. Beaman

• Decision Date: 09 December 1907
• Docket Number: 12902
• Citation: 90 Miss. 762,44 So. 987
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: CHARLES BEAMAN ET AL. v. EDWARD BEAMAN ET AL

44 So. 987

90 Miss. 762

CHARLES BEAMAN ET AL. v. EDWARD BEAMAN ET AL

No. 12902

Supreme Court of Mississippi

December 9, 1907

FROM the chancery court of Attala county, HON. JAMES F. MCCOOL Chancellor.

Edward Beaman and others, appellees, were complainants in the court below; Charles Beaman and others, appellants, were defendant there. From a decree overruling defendants' demurrer to the bill of complaint the defendants appealed to the supreme court. The suit was for the cancellation of deeds under which some of the defendants claimed the land, and for a partition thereof between the parties in interest, with an accounting for rents, etc.

The land formerly belonged to one Alexander Beaman, who, in his lifetime, executed a deed of trust upon the same to secure a debt due to one of his creditors. Alexander Beaman died intestate, leaving the debt unpaid, and the land descended to his children, his heirs, as tenants in common. Thereafter the secured creditor caused the land to be sold under the deed of trust and the same was purchased by Joanna Beaman, the wife of Charles Beaman, one of the children and heirs of the original owner.

Each of the complainants is a child and heir of the deceased Alexander Beaman; the defendants are: Charles Beaman, one of said children, and heirs; his wife, Joanna, the purchaser, as above stated, and persons holding under them.

The statute, Code 1892, § 3101; Code 1906, § 3526 authorizes controverted titles and all equities to be disposed of in partition suits.

Affirmed and remanded.

S. L Dodd, for appellants.

The attention of the court is invited to § 2289 of the Code of 1892, which was the law in force at the time Joanna Beaman purchased the land at the trustee's sale.

"Married women are fully emancipated from all disabilities on account of coverture; and the common law, as to the disabilities of married women and the effect on the rights of property of the wife, is totally abrogated, and marriage shall not impose any disability or incapacity on a woman as to the ownership acquisition, or disposition of property of any sort, or as to her capacity to make contracts and to do all acts in reference to property which she could lawfully do if she were not married; but every woman now married or hereafter to be married, shall have the same capacity to acquire, hold, manage, control, use, enjoy and dispose of all property, real and personal, in possession or expectancy, and to make any contracts in reference to it, and to bind herself personally, and to sue and be sued, with all the rights, and liabilities incident thereto, as though she were not married."

If the plain language of the law as above named imposed no disability upon Joanna Beaman, and she could acquire property, as though she were not married, "why could she not invest her money as she saw proper?"

To say that Joanna Beaman could not purchase land, and acquire title to it because she was the wife of Charles Beaman, who was a son of Alexander Beaman, is to impose upon her a disability that the law does not permit.

It is plain that if Joanna Beaman can acquire property after marriage as fully and as completely as before marriage, or as if she were not married at all, then for the court to hold that she was under disability to acquire property by reason of her being the wife of Charles Beaman would be to engraft an exception on the statute that it does not contain.

We are met with the argument of the counsel for appellee who cite, Robinson v. Lewis, 68 Miss. 69, S.C., 8 So. 258, which refers to a sale of land for taxes, where Lewis had purchased at a tax sale the interest of Criddle, his wife's brother.

That case has no application to the one at bar; Joanna Beaman was not a party, nor in any manner interested in the land sold by Fletcher, trustee, when she purchased the same.

She was under no obligation to pay off and discharge any lien or incumbrance on the lands of Alexander Beaman, deceased, because she was not an heir at law; no distress could have been had or taken against her on the default in payment of taxes on the land in suit by the heirs of Alexander Beaman, for she was not an heir, nor did she hold as in privity with the other cotenants.

It has been well said that the rule which prevents one spouse from securing the title where the other is disqualified, rested only upon a supposed privity of estate between them, but our statutes, above referred to, have wiped out and destroyed all such contention.

And we are again met by counsel for the appellee that Joanna Beaman could not prchase the land because public policy imputes to her those facts the existence of which precludes the other from action.

If that is the law, then the statute above referred to, which gives married women the right to acquire property as though they were not married, is abrogated by the courts, and the plain and manifest meaning of the law as written...