30 A.2d 239 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1942
Argued October 28, 1942. Petition and rule by plaintiff in execution for payment to plaintiff of specified amount of proceeds of sale. Before DAVISON, P.J. *314
Rule made absolute. Defendants appealed. Plaintiff issued an execution on her judgment against defendant Lester E. Reineman. The fund for distribution in the hands of the sheriff under the writ, amounting to $944.25, was claimed by appellants, husband and wife, as the proceeds of sale of personal property owned by them by entireties. The court awarded this fund to plaintiff in satisfaction of her judgment; hence this appeal.
Appellants, in 1929 bought a farm of 87 acres in Franklin County taking title as husband and wife by entireties; they have lived on the farm and have worked it together. A notice appeared in a Chambersburg newspaper over the name of the husband alone advertising a public sale of live stock on the farm. The property advertised and sold consisted of a pair of mules, 23 head of cattle, and 8 hogs. It is appellants' position that the mules were brought to the farm by them when they bought it and that all of the cattle and hogs were the increase of stock on the farm. They contend that their title to this personal property was by entireties, not liable for the debts of the husband, and that their estate was not terminated by the sale.
It is elementary that personal property may be held by entireties and that neither husband or wife has a separate interest therein which can be reached by the creditors of the other. The Married Women's Acts (
On the morning of January 19, 1940, the date of the sale, the sheriff with a deputy came to the farm prepared to make a levy on the personal property about to be sold. The testimony is sufficient to support the conclusion that in the discussion which followed, the wife-appellant agreed that her husband sign an order on the clerk of the sale directing him to pay the sheriff $944.25 of the proceeds in satisfaction of the writ. He executed the order and the fund in the hands of the sheriff was derived from that source.
An estate by entireties may always be destroyed by agreement of the parties. Berhalter v. Berhalter,
But regardless of the legal effect of the above order, plaintiff is entitled to the fund, on the conclusion of *316 the lower court that the testimony does not establish that the property sold was in fact owned by entireties.
The husband in this case advertised the sale of property ashis, without complaint of the wife. In general, where husband and wife live together in the same house or on the same land, the ownership of personal property, though in the possession of both, is presumed to be in the husband and not in the wife. Rhoads v.Gordon,
Order affirmed.