Strong v. Garrett

• Decision Date: 12 October 1949
• Docket Number: No. A-2189.,A-2189.
• Citation: 224 S.W.2d 471
• Parties: STRONG et al. v. GARRETT et al.
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

Page 471

224 S.W.2d 471

STRONG et al. v. GARRETT et al.

No. A-2189.

Supreme Court of Texas.

October 12, 1949.

Rehearing Denied November 16, 1949.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Paul S. Colley, Jr., Henderson, for petitioners, the Strongs.

Gladney & Stephen, Henderson, Jos. C. Gladney, Henderson, for petitioners, Lewises.

W. E. Tumlin, Marshall, Reagan R. Huffman, Marshall, for respondents.

HICKMAN, Chief Justice.

This is an action in trespass to try title to 62½ acres of land in the Juan Y'Barbo Grant, in Rusk County. The plaintiffs in the trial court were Jesse Joseph Strong and his sister Alma B. Strong. The defendants were Leuvinia Lewis and husband, Cleveland Lewis, Charlie Garrett and wife, Evie Garrett, and Mrs. Georgia Bateman, and Claud and John Bateman. Charlie Garrett was awarded title to the land on his cross action in the trial court, and that judgment was affirmed by the Court of Civil Appeals. 218 S.W.2d 873. The Strongs and the Lewises are the petitioners before this Court.

The common source of title is Mrs. M. B. James. A predecessor in title to Mrs. James divided the Juan Y'Barbo Grant into six tracts of 62½ acres each. These tracts had identical metes and bounds description, except for the point of origin. They were numbered 1 through 6. Before title passed to Mrs. James her predecessor had conveyed away all of the tracts except Tract No. 3. In December, 1902, Mrs. James, who owned only Tract No. 3, conveyed to Anderson Strong 62½ acres out of the Y'Barbo Grant, but the metes and bounds description covered Tract No. 2. In that deed a vendor's lien was retained to secure a purchase money note. Shortly thereafter Anderson Strong moved upon Tract No. 3. In all subsequent dealings with this land, including proceedings in a lawsuit later to be mentioned, and also including some of the pleadings in the instant case, the land has carried the metes and bounds description of Tract No. 2. Prior to this suit the land had never been described in any of the instruments by the tract number, but always by the metes and bounds description covering Tract No. 2.

After receiving the deed from Mrs. James describing Tract No. 2, Anderson Strong, as early as 1905, and probably earlier, began living upon Tract No. 3, cultivating it and otherwise exercising full control over it, appropriating same as a homestead until his death in 1916. On December 27, 1906, he married Fannie Daniels, and the plaintiffs Jesse Joseph Strong and Alma B. Strong were born to that marriage. In January, 1911, Anderson and Fannie Strong were divorced, and in the divorce decree Anderson was awarded title to "62 acres of land, the same being the land bought by the plaintiff (Anderson Strong) from Mrs. M. B. James, and known as the Anderson Strong place and being the place where he now lives N. E. of Henderson, in Rusk County, Texas." The land was not otherwise described in the judgment. After the divorce decree, Fannie and her children remained in Rusk County until 1920, when they moved to Chicago, Illinois, where they still reside.

In 1912 Anderson Strong married Ida Young, who at that time had a daughter named Leuvinia. Leuvinia and her present husband, Cleveland Lewis, are parties to this suit. On March 25, 1916, Anderson Strong died intestate, leaving as his survivors his wife, Ida Young Strong, and his two children by his first marriage, the plaintiffs herein. The probate court ordered the homestead place of Anderson Strong, which was not described by metes and bounds, but which was sufficiently described to make certain that it was the land upon which he lived and which is the subject matter of this suit, set aside to the widow Ida Young Strong, subject to a vendor's lien against the property. As a matter of fact, the vendor's lien note by its terms was a lien against Tract No. 2, and not the land in suit.

On December 23, 1917, Ida Young Strong married respondent Charlie Garrett, and together they resided upon a farm owned by Garrett, near the land in suit, until Ida's death, intestate, in 1936. The following year, 1937, Charlie Garrett married his present wife, Evie. A short time before Ida Young Strong married Charlie Garrett she conveyed to him, by warranty deed, a tract of land described by metes and bounds as in the other instruments. That deed and the description therein contained will be considered more particularly later on in this opinion.

As stated above, title to all the land in suit has been awarded to Charlie Garrett. In order to test the correctness of that award it becomes necessary to determine what character of title, if any, Anderson Strong acquired, and then trace that title to the date this action was filed. The Batemans, who were made defendants in the trial court, are the heirs of Mrs. James, Anderson Strong's vendor. They filed disclaimers in the case, and no further notice need be taken of them, since unquestionably the title has passed from Mrs. James and her heirs. None of the parties have record title to Tract No. 3, the land in suit. The deed from Mrs. James to Anderson Strong described by metes and bounds Tract No. 2. The deed is free of ambiguity, and there is no basis for the application of any rule of construction by which it could be held that the deed conveyed Tract No. 3. Standing unreformed, the deed did not convey title to Tract No. 3. Davis v. George, 104 Tex. 106, 134 S.W. 326. But it does not follow that Anderson Strong acquired no title at all. The undisputed facts establish that he acquired title by limitation. The deed from Mrs. James to him was executed prior to his marriage. He took possession of the land as early as 1905, while single, and continued to occupy it until his death in 1916. While he had no record title to the land which he occupied and used during that period, he did have an equitable right upon which he could successfully have maintained a suit to reform the deed. That right existed during the remainder of his lifetime. Anderson Strong having gone into possession of the land intended to be conveyed, and having exercised acts of ownership thereto, and his title not having been questioned by Mrs. James or those in privity with her, the statute of limitation of four years would not have been a bar to a suit by him for reformation. Howard v. Young, Tex.Civ.App., 210 S.W.2d 241, Error Refused, N.R.E.; Payne v. Ross, 10 Tex.Civ.App. 419, 30 S.W. 670. But it is a bar to his children, the plaintiffs herein, who have not been in possession of the land or exercised acts of ownership thereto; and the courts below did not err in failing to reform the deed for their benefit, in view of Charlie Garrett's plea of limitation of four years. Article 5529, R.C.S.

The period of limitation was completed during his marriage to his second wife, Ida Young Strong. This question then must be decided: Was this title "acquired" during his marriage to Ida Young Strong, and therefore community property under Article 4619, R.C.S., Vernon's Ann. Civ.St. art. 4619, or was it "claimed" by Anderson Strong before his marriage, and therefore his separate property under Article 4613, R.C.S., Vernon's Ann.Civ.St. art. 4613? Had Anderson Strong entered upon this land as a naked trespasser, without any property right therein, he would have had no basis for a claim of title until the full period of limitation had run. Property thus acquired by pure limitation, where the period began before marriage and ended during the marriage relation, is community property. Brown v. Foster Lumber Co., Tex.Civ.App., 178 S.W. 787, Writ Refused; O'Meara v. Williams, Tex.Civ.App., 137 S.W.2d 66, Error Dismissed, Correct Judgment. This rule is recognized in Hutto v. Cook, 139 Tex. 571, 164 S.W.2d 513. But Anderson Strong was not a trespasser. He had a property right with respect to this land, and although he had no record title thereto, and his title was ripened by limitation, still when that period of limitation expired his title took character from his original claim, and the property became his separate estate. Sauvage v. Wauhop, Tex.Civ.App., 143 S.W. 259, Writ Dismissed; 23 Tex.Jur., Husband and Wife, § 109. See also Creamer v. Briscoe, 101 Tex. 490, 109 S.W. 911, 17 L.R.A., N.S., 154, 130 Am.St.Rep. 869, and Simpson v. Oats, 102 Tex. 186, 114 S.W. 105. Our conclusion is that according to the record before us Anderson Strong owned this property as his separate estate at the time of his death.

The plaintiffs were Anderson Strong's only children, and upon his death they inherited the land, subject to the homestead right of his widow, Ida Young Strong, and subject also to her life estate in one-third of the land. Article 2571, R.C.S.

Charlie Garrett was the vendee under a general warranty deed executed by Ida Young Strong after the death of Anderson Strong. After that deed was executed, Charlie Garrett took possession of the land, and shortly thereafter married Ida Young Strong, who had executed the deed to him. The deed from Ida Young Strong to Charlie Garrett contained the same erroneous description by metes and bounds as the deed from Mrs. James to Anderson Strong, but it went further and stated that the land was that tract which had been set apart to her by the Probate Court of Rusk County, and the tract which her former husband, Anderson Strong, had purchased from Mrs. James. The order of the probate court set aside to Ida Young Strong "the tract of land used as homestead," subject to the vendor's lien note against same. The tract in suit was the homestead of Anderson Strong.

It is the general rule that a particular description in a deed will prevail over a general description. Cullers v. Platt, 81 Tex. 258, 16 S.W. 1003; Klein v. Humble Oil & Refining Co., 126 Tex. 450, 86 S.W.2d 1077. But the situation here may be distinguished from that in the cases in which this general rule has been applied. In this case the general description does not enlarge the particular, but is wholly repugnant to it, in that it...