Patterson v. Patterson

Decision Date01 January 1908
Citation197 Mass. 112,83 N.E. 364
PartiesPATTERSON v. PATTERSON.
CourtUnited States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court
COUNSEL

Percy G. Bolster, for petitioner.

R. E Jeffery and H. J. Jaquith, for libelant.

OPINION

KNOWLTON C.J.

Most of the defendant's exceptions to the master's report relate to the title to the property. Many of the important articles were claimed by the petitioner under leases in writing, which were also conditional sales, made to her by shopkeepers. The fact that these conveyances were made directly to her, in her name, with the knowledge and consent of her husband, with nothing to control or affect the legal presumption from such conveyances, except the fact that her husband furnished her a large part of the money to pay for the goods while she furnished the rest, and the further fact that they were bought to be used and were used in the family, warranted, if it did not require the master's finding that they became the petitioner's separate property. Edgerly v. Edgerly, 112 Mass. 175; Cormerais v. Wesselhoeft, 114 Mass. 550; McCowan v. Donaldson, 128 Mass. 169; Libby v. Chase, 117 Mass. 105. The facts found by the master render immaterial or inapplicable most of the requests for rulings and the exceptions founded upon them which relate to this part of the property. The requests ignore the changes in our law wrought by the statutes giving married women rights to acquire and control property as if they were sole, except that they cannot contract with their husbands. These considerations dispose of the first, second, third, sixth, seventh, ninth, tenth, eleventh and fourteenth exceptions. The fourth and fifth exceptions, which relate to gifts from a husband to a wife, are inapplicable, as the matter found that no such gifts were made. There is nothing in the report to which the twelfth exception is applicable. The thirteenth exception is covered by what we have said in reference to the others. The fifteenth is immaterial.

The important question in the case is raised by the appeal from the final decree, and perhaps by the eighth exception also. It relates to the jurisdiction of the court to grant relief on this petition. Upon the finding of the master that the property belongs to the petitioner, and the admission in the answer that it is held and detained by the respondent against her will, there is no doubt that a court of equity, upon a bill brought by the wife against her husband, might grant her relief. Frankel v. Frankel, 173 Mass. 214, 53 N.E 398, 73 Am. St. Rep. 266; Lombard v. Morse, 155 Mass. 136, 29 N.E. 205, 14 L. R. A. 273. This is a petition brought by the libelee against the libelant, in connection with proceedings in which a decree of divorce nisi on the ground of...

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