Batts v. Scott

Citations

• 37 Tex. 59

Syllabus

<p>1. Under the law of this State, an innocent purchaser of an equitable title to real estate is as much entitled to protection as a purchaser of the legal title. A purchaser by title bond, therefore, who has paid the whole or part of the purchase-money, without notice, actual or constructive, of prior equities of other parties, is entitled to protection against such equities, to the extent of the payment so made, but to no greater an extent. The execution of negotiable promissory notes to the vendor at the time of the making of the title bond, and the contemporaneous undertaking to discharge such notes by paying for goods delivered to the vendor by a third party on the vendee’s responsibility, are considered tantamount to an actual payment by the vendee to the vendor, and to a cancellation of the notes as between them.</p> <p>3. Our registration laws are applicable to equitable titles and interests, in like manner as to legal titles and interests.</p> <p>3. On the 23d of March, 1867, M. and wife owned and occupied a homestead in B. county, and on that day M. conveyed a lot in Galveston to a creditor to secure a debt. In the fall of 1867, M. and his family moved upon the lot in Galveston, and occupied it as the homestead until the death of M., whose widow and minor children continued to occupy the lot as a homestead until the widow also died. The estates of M. and wife were insolvent, and they left no other real estate than the lot in Galveston. The creditor brought suit to foreclose. Held, that as M. and wife, at the execution of the deed of trust, occupied as their homestead other land than the lot in question, their homestead right attached to the lot (if it attached to it at all), subject to the deed of trust; but that the minor children of M. and wife were entitled, in preference to the deed of trust, to an allowance in lieu of a homestead, to be raised by a sale of the lot by the administrator—the overplus, above the allowance to the minor children, to be appl