Palmer Pressed Brick Works v. Stevenson

• Decision Date: 03 May 1916
• Docket Number: (No. 983.)
• Parties: PALMER PRESSED BRICK WORKS v. STEVENSON et al.
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

Page 999

185 S.W. 999

PALMER PRESSED BRICK WORKS v. STEVENSON et al.

(No. 983.)

Court of Civil Appeals of Texas. Amarillo.

May 3, 1916.

Appeal from District Court, Dallas County; E. B. Muse, Judge.

Action by the Palmer Pressed Brick Works against F. L. Stevenson and others. From an adverse judgment, plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.

C. M. Smithdeal, of Dallas, for appellant. W. N. Coombes, of Dallas, for appellees.

HENDRICKS, J.

In 1894 F. L. Stevenson, a married man, acquired lot No. 12, in block No. 9, in Fairview addition, 70×175 feet, fronting on Simpson street, in the city of Dallas. In 1895 he built an 11-room house on said lot, used thereafter as a boarding house, and conducted by his wife, F. K. Stevenson. Previous to the construction of the house, Stevenson, the husband, built a barn on the northeast corner of said lot, and in the rear of said property, and in October, 1913, he conveyed 45×45 feet out of said lot, on which the barn was situated, to his wife, F. K. Stevenson. Prior to this conveyance to the wife, the barn was not used, except for purposes of storage; the horse owned by the husband having been sold several years previous thereto.

In 1911 the husband, F. L. Stevenson, became indebted to the appellant, Palmer Pressed Brick Works, for the debt sued upon in this case, and which was thereafter merged into judgment, and upon which an attachment was issued and levied upon the part of the lot conveyed to the wife, upon which the barn was situated. The wife was made a party to this suit before the rendition of final judgment, and upon the trial, as to the ownership of the property, the court denied appellant a foreclosure of the attachment lien. Another part of the lot — the northwest corner of same — seems to have been sold to other parties at a different time, and the rear of the property, including the barn, was at some time fenced separately from the main house; but the rear of the lot seems to have been used, at times for storing timber, and as a place for garbage, deposited in a can, hauled off by the city. The wife, F. K. Stevenson, reconstructed the barn, at a cost of about $200, into a tenant house; the husband testifying that at times he used one room of the same for an office, having his desk and certain papers therein, in his business as a contractor and carpenter.

So far as this record shows, the barn, on the rear of the homestead lot, whether used or not for the accommodation of a horse at the time of the conveyance by the husband, constituted a part of the homestead; it was on the homestead lot. The husband had a right to deed any part of it to the wife; previous to the date of the conveyance, we do not find sufficient evidence to disclose segregation and abandonment of that part of the homestead upon which the barn was situated to divest it of its homestead character. When the wife received the deed, it was her separate property, irrespective of a consideration. If she reconstructed the barn into a tenant house, with her separate property, the creditors could not reach any part...