Carpenter v. Franklin

• Decision Date: 20 September 1890
• Citation: 14 S.W. 484
• Parties: CARPENTER <I>et al.</I> v. FRANKLIN <I>et ux.</I>
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

Page 484

14 S.W. 484

CARPENTER et al. v. FRANKLIN et ux.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

September 20, 1890.

Appeal from chancery court, Knox county; HENRI R. GIBSON, Chancellor.

Taylor & Hood, for complainants. Ingersoll & Peyton, for defendants.

LURTON, J.

This is a bill by creditors of Matt Franklin, to subject to the satisfaction of their debts a house and lot, the title to which is in his wife. This property was bought by Mrs. Franklin in 1886, for the price of $1,900, and the title taken in her name. She paid at the time the sum of $800, and gave the notes of herself and husband for the remainder, payable in one and two years. This bill was filed in August, 1889, at which time these notes had been paid. Complainants became creditors some time after the purchase of this property, but before the payment of the deferred notes. The bill charges that the money procured by Matt Franklin upon certain notes indorsed by them for his accommodation was used in paying off the last of the purchase money. This charge is denied, and there is no proof to sustain it. The bill further charges that the purchase money paid for the property was paid by their debtor, Matt Franklin, and the title was taken in his wife's name, for the fraudulent purpose of defeating his creditors. There is no proof of fraud, in fact, upon the part of either husband or wife; and complainants' bill must be sustained, if at all, upon the ground that the conveyance to the wife was a voluntary settlement by her husband upon the wife, and void as to existing creditors. Complainants took the proof of both Mr. and Mrs. Franklin, and rely upon it to support their case. From this proof it appears that the entire purchase money has been paid by the wife, from a fund slowly accumulated during a period of 18 years as a result of her great economy, and earnings made in keeping boarders and as a seamstress, together with her savings, from time to time, of small sums given her by her husband or saved by her out of her personal or household expense fund. Mr. Franklin was a railroad engineer, and in receipt for about 16 years of wages averaging $120 per month. The management of his household, from his necessary absence, seems to have fallen almost wholly upon his wife. He was accustomed to turn over to her each month one-half of his wages, to be used by her for her personal and household expenses. Whatever she was, by economy, enabled to save from this allowance of her husband for personal and household expenses, she retained and claimed as her own. As far back as 1880, she began, with her husband's permission, to take boarders; and the profits arising from this source she has been permitted to retain as her own earnings. She was, during all this time, accustomed to do sewing, and the money thus made she added to her fund. From the beginning she was actuated by a very earnest desire to acquire a home of her own, and to this end she practiced the utmost frugality. The fund thus accumulating was kept out at interest by her, and in her own name. To add to her savings and earnings, she did her own housework, her cooking, and her sewing. So frugal and industrious had she been at the time she bought the place now sought to be subjected to her husband's debts, her fund amounted to $1,200. Mr. Franklin had no debts prior to 1886, and the rights of no creditor were affected by his assent to his wife's assertion of title to the fund thus accumulated.

If this fund of $1,200 be treated as the aggregate of the gifts of the husband to the wife within the 16 years during which it was accumulated, then, as against the husband and his subsequent creditors, there is no difficulty in holding this $1,200 to be the separate estate of the wife. A direct gift by the husband to the wife, during coverture, of money or other personalty, creates, by necessary implication, a separate estate in the wife. Powell v. Powell, 9 Humph. 477; Templeton v. Brown, 86 Tenn. 50, 5 S. W. Rep. 441. A very early and much cited case is that of Slanning v. Style, 3 P. Wms. 334. In that case the widow claimed to be paid out of her husband's estate £100. It appeared that whenever any person came to buy any fowls, pigs, etc., the husband would say he had nothing to do with those things, which were his wife's, and that he had confessed that he had at one time borrowed, from the fund in his wife's hands arising from such sales of fowls and small produce, the sum of £100. To the claim, it was insisted that the...