Michael Robert Tedder v. Gardner Aldrich, Llp

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• clarifying that “community debt” means only “that some community property is liable for its satisfaction”
• finding that a person can be held liable for a spouse’s attorneys’ fees only if he either acts as an agent for the spouse or the fees are for \necessaries” such as \food, clothing, and habitation”
• observing that marriage does not create joint and several liability and discussing sections 3.201(a) and 2.501 of Texas Family Code in context of dispute between law firm and husband over whether husband was liable to law firm for legal services it rendered to wife
• dispersing the general notion that liabilities assumed during a marriage encumbered both spouses jointly
• “[O]ne spouse is not liable for the other’s debt unless the other incurred it as the one’s agent or the one failed to support the other and the debt is for necessaries.”
• “We have suggested that a spouse’s necessaries [under spousal support statute] are things like food, clothing, and habitation[]—that is, sustenance—and we have squarely rejected the view that a spouse’s legal fees in a divorce proceeding fall into this category.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).