Clark v. Nat'l Bank of Misssouri

• Decision Date: 31 October 1870
• Parties: SARAH N. CLARK, Appellant, v. THE NATIONAL BANK OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI, Respondent.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

47 Mo. 17

SARAH N. CLARK, Appellant,

v.THE NATIONAL BANK OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI, Respondent.

Supreme Court of Missouri.

October Term, 1870.

Appeal from St. Louis Circuit Court

Bakewell & Farish, for appellant.

I. It appears in evidence, in this case, that the money deposited by plaintiff was the proceeds of real estate belonging to her.

II. The amount in suit the bank claims to have paid to her

husband on checks signed by him “Sarah P. Clark, by L. P. C. Clark.” But the husband, by the very act of checking it out, recognized it to be her money by signing his name as her agent. No attempt is made to show that he was her agent for any such purpose. It is in evidence that he was not.

III. It is submitted that a fair construction of section 14, chapter 115, Gen. Stat. 1865, gives the wife a right to her separate estate as against her husband as well as his creditors. Boyce v. Cayce, 17 Mo. 47, and the cases following it, as Pawley v. Vogel, 42 Mo. 300, are interpretations of the act of March 5, 1849 (Sess. Acts 1849, p. 67), which was an act amendatory of an act concerning executions, and dealt merely with exemptions. The provision of section 14, chapter 115, Gen. Stat. 1865, is a new substantive provision, not under the head of “executions” or “exemptions,” but under that of the “rights of married women.”

IV. Section 14, chapter 68, Gen. Stat. 1865, authorizing plaintiff to deposit, authorizes her so far to make a contract with the bank, and the bank must be held to fulfill its own contract with its own depositor--to keep her money safely and pay it to her order in sums to suit.

Calvin F. Burnes, for respondent.

CURRIER, Judge, delivered the opinion of the court.

It appears from the record in this cause that deposits were made with the defendant in 1867-8 in the name of the plaintiff, who was then a married woman. Of these deposits Mrs. Clark withdrew all but about $600 on her own checks, and her husband drew the balance. Since these transactions Mrs. Clark has been divorced from her husband, and this suit is brought to recover from the bank the amount paid him. It does not seem to be questioned that at common law the plaintiff's husband was clothed with authority, in virtue of his marital rights, to collect debts owing to his wife, and to reduce to possession her choses in action, of whatever name or description. It is contended, however, that our statute has modified the common-law rule on this subject, and divested the husband of that power in a case like the present.

The statute (Gen. Stat. 1865, p. 366, § 14) in relation to savings banks and fund companies, enacts that “married women may become stockholders, and may deposit money with any bank or savings institution incorporated under the laws of this State, or doing business by virtue of the several acts of Congress providing for the organization of national banks, and (that) any receipt or other acquittance given by such married women for such deposits shall be as valid and binding as if given by femmes sole.” This statute empowers a married woman to execute valid acquittances for deposits of the class mentioned, but leaves her in all other respects in the same condition she was at common law. Independently of the statute, she was competent to make deposits and hold...