Cookson v. Toole

Citations

• 59 Ill. 515

Syllabus

<p>. 1. Married women—of remedies against them upon contracts in respect to their separate property—whether at law or in equity. So far as relates to the engagements of a married woman, not within the capacity to contract given, by implication, by the act of 1861, the remedy, when a proper case exists, must be sought under the rules in relation to the general contracts of married women and their binding effect upon their separate estates, in equity, as under the old forms of settlement before the statute, because, in that case, the implication of capacity to bind her separate estate arises only in equity.</p> <p>2. But the implication of capacity to contract in respect to her separate property arising under the statute, is an implication of law, and being an implication of law, and not of equity, the capacity to contract within the scope of the implication is a legal capacity, and all contracts under it are legal contracts, cognizable by courts of law.</p> <p>3. So it is held, that an action at law will lie against a married woman to recover for work and labor done and performed at her request, in and about the improvement and cultivation of her farm, and in taking care of her stock thereon, such farm and stock being her sole and separate-property, owned and held by her under the provisions of the act of 1861.</p> <p>4 Former decision. So far as the case of Mitchell v. Carpenter, 50 Ill. 470, holds that the remedy against married women in respect to their contracts relating to their separate estates under the statute, is not at law, but only in equity, a question not involved in that case, it is to be regarded as mere obiter dicta.</p>