Snyder v. Webb

Citations

• 3 Cal. 83

Syllabus

<p>The Practice Act gives to a married woman the right to sue without her husband, where the action concerns her separate estate.</p> <p>Under the act, property owned by the wife before marriage, and that acquired afterwards by gift, bequest, devise, or descent, shall be her separate property.</p> <p>The rents and profits of the separate property are declared to be common property.</p> <p>The act governs if there be no marriage contract containing stipulations contrary thereto.</p> <p>The act confers on the parties, before marriage, an unlimited right to make whatever stipulations they may agree upon in respect to property, and this is not confined to property in esse, but contemplates property to be acquired, and the rents and profits of the present estate.</p> <p>Our statute does not dispense with the interposition of trustees to protect the wife, except with respect to.the property specified in the act. In all other respects the common law remains unaltered, and the wife may resort to trustees for all purposes of security.</p> <p>If the husband should take the rents and profits of her estate, he will he held to account for her benefit, to the same extent as if he had undertaken a specific trust.</p> <p>The law which deprives a married woman of the right to make contracts is not altered by the statute, unless in respect of the property specified by it, and she cannot bring suit in her own name upon a contract which she was not authorized by the statute to make.</p>