Heard v. Hicks

• Decision Date: 04 February 1887
• Citation: 82 Ala. 484,1 So. 639
• Parties: HEARD and another v. HICKS.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

1 So. 639

82 Ala. 484

HEARD and another v. HICKS.

Supreme Court of Alabama

February 4, 1887

Appeal from chancery court, Butler county.

Bill in equity by married woman to cancel conveyances, and remove cloud from title.

The appellee, Charlotte B. Hicks, a married woman, the wife of J A. Hicks, filed by her next friend a bill of complaint against her said husband and one George T. Heard. The bill alleges that complainant owned, as her separate statutory estate, certain lands; that on the twenty-fourth day of April, 1882, she and her husband signed a note to said Heard for an alleged indebtedness of her husband to Heard, and a mortgage on said lands to secure said note; that on January 27, 1883, she and her husband executed a conveyance of said lands to Heard in payment of a balance claimed on said note that on January 1, 1884, Heard and his wife sold, or pretended to sell, said lands back to complainant's husband, for 30 bales of cotton, and executed a conveyance thereof to him, and on the same day complainant and her husband executed mortgages on said lands to Heard to secure the payment of said cotton, which was payable, in installments of 15 bales each, in one and two years. The bill further alleges that complainant has never given up the possession of said lands, and that she was induced to sign said notes and conveyances by the fraudulent representations of her husband and said Heard, and prays that said conveyances be canceled as a cloud upon her title. The appellant demurred to said bill, on the ground that it did not set forth any facts showing in what the alleged fraud consisted, and did not state what the alleged fraudulent representations were, and that they were willful and intentional. The court rendered a decree overruling the appellant's demurrers, and this is here assigned as error.

Gamble & Richardson, for appellants.

CLOPTON J.

No principle of law is more decisively settled than that a conveyance of her statutory separate estate by a married woman, whose disabilities of coverture have not been removed whether by mortgage or absolute deed, as security for or in consideration of the debt of her husband, is void under our statutes. The conditions existing, the invalidity cannot be avoided by any circuitous line or series of conveyances. A mortgage by a married woman and her husband of her statutory separate estate as security for the debt of her husband followed by an absolute...