Morse v. Roach
| Decision Date | 31 December 1924 |
| Docket Number | No. 1.,1. |
| Parties | MORSE v. ROACH et al. (two cases). |
| Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from Circuit Court, Wayne County, in Chancery; Fred S. Lamb, Circuit Judge.
Consolidated bills by Wm. S. Morse and Marion E. Morse by William S. Morse, her guardian, against William H. Roach and others. Decrees for plaintiff in each action, and defendants appeal. Affirmed.
Argued before CLARK, C. J., and McDONALD, BIRD, SHARPE, MOORE, STEERE, FELLOWS, and WIEST, JJ.Thos. W. Thompson and George H. Lovequest, both of Detroit, for appellants.
Charles F. Meyler, of Detroit (Clayton A. Powell, of Detroit, of counsel), for appellees.
This is a consolidation of two judgment creditors' bills, with usual averments, filed to reach assets belonging to defendant William H. Roach, and claimed to be held in the name of Mary E. Roach, his wife. The Dime Savings Bank, holder of an unquestioned mortgage, is no longer a defendant. From decrees granted plaintiffs the defendants appealed.
The judgments against defendant William H. Roach were rendered April 15, 1920, and October 4, 1921, aggregate about $12,000, and both actions were for damages occasioned in an automobile accident August 6, 1917. Executions were duly issued and returned wholly unsatisfied.
August 6, 1917, the date of the accident, defendants, as husband and wife, held title, by the entirety, to real estate of the value of about $45,000. Such holdings represented the accumulations of defendants, after their marriage, with the exception of about $800 the wife had when married.
After the accident of August 6, 1917, title to all the property was placed in the name of the wife, and all subsequent accumulations also placed in her name.
At the time of filing the bills defendants held real estate of the value of about $65,000, all in the name of the wife. The trial judge held the scheme of having the title in the wife was for the purpose of keeping the property away from the creditors of the husband, and gave defendants an opportunity to pay plaintiffs, and in default thereof decreed that all the real estate so held be sold, and out of the proceeds defendants be first paid $45,000, representing the value of their holdings by the entireties at the time of the accident, and then plaintiffs' judgments to be satisfied and any balance to be paid to defendants.
Defendants insist on the right to handle their property in the way they have, because their holdings were by the entireties at the time of the accident, and therefore beyond the reach of plaintiffs, and subsequent transfers of title to the wife worked no fraud on creditors.
We understand the decrees recognize the exempt character of the holdings at the time of the accident and save the full value thereof to defendants. But may defendants carry subsequent accumulations of the husband in the name of the wife and keep the same from the reach of creditors?
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...Mortgage & Loan Co., 101 N. J. Eq. 51, 137 A. 89;United Stores Realty Corp. v. Asea, (N. J. Err. & App.) 142 A. 38;Morse v. Roach, 229 Mich. 538, 201 N. W. 471;Lipskey v. Voloshen, 155 Md. 139, 141 A. 402. Decisions cited to the contrary were made without reference to the statute and withou......
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