56 Miss. 606 | Miss. | 1879
delivered the opinion of the court.
Plaintiff in error (defendant below) claims that the locus in quo constitutes his exempt homestead.
The tract owned by him consists of forty acres. It is low and sickly. There is no house on it, but he dwells in a house built on high land belonging to the railroad company, immediately adjoining it; and this house is distant from his own line less than three hundred yards. This was the .condition of affairs when he purchased, and his vendor had built the house and so occupied it and the land for several years previous to his purchase. He is a man of family, owns no other land than this, and cultivates and derives his subsistence from it. (
Is it exempt ? Eighty acres are by law exempt, provided they are actually occupied as a homestead. In this instance, if we connect with his own tract the railroad land occupied by him, he will still have less than eighty acres. What the nature of his tenure of the railroad land is, does not appear, nor is it, perhaps, material, since any right'in land actually occupied as a homestead will support a claim to exemption. In this instance the occupancy seems to have continued for several
Judounent reversed and cause remanded.