Hinkle v. Landis

Citations

• 131 Pa. 573
• 18 A. 941
• 1890 Pa. LEXIS 1142

Syllabus

<p>[To be reported.]</p> <p>1. There has always been a marked distinction between the power of a married woman and that of her husband over their respective estates; while he may dispose of his personalty to whom he pleases, subject only to such restraints as the law, in favor of the wife, has positively imposed upon him, she, on the contrary, has such powers of disposition, only, as the statute law has conferred upon her.</p> <p>2. Under the statutes prior to the Married Person’s Property Act of June 3, 1887, P. L. 332, a married woman was not invested with the same control over her personal property that her husband had over his; that legislation being intended, almost without exception, for the protection of her estate against her husband and his creditors, and not to enable her to dispose of it without his consent.</p> <p>(a) A married woman, the holder of notes to the amount of $1,180 given to her by her brother-in-law for money lent him, surrendered them in 1885, and, without the knowledge and consent of her husband, received in their place a bond providing that the obligor should pay her annually during her life interest at the rate of five per cent per annum upon $1,180, and that the principal should never become due and payable:</p> <p>8. The fact that under the bond the obligee was to receive and enjoy during her life the interest upon the principal sum named therein, did not render the transaction a testamentary disposition of the money in any proper sense, but it was evidently intended as an absolute transfer of the sum named; and such transfer the wife had no right to make without the knowledge and consent of her husband.</p> <p>4. Nothing in the nature of the transaction indicating that it was intended as a bona fide purchase of an annuity, it must be presumed that the obligor knew that the wife was acting ultra vires; and, in an action by her administrator for said principal, a point to the effect that if the bond was designed to deprive her husband o