52 Iowa 250 | Iowa | 1879
It is contended that as the plaintiff was not engaged in a separate business from that pursued by her husband her earnings while in the performance of the duties growing out of the marital relation are the property of her husband, and as the increase of the cows was produced by the labor and care of the husband, or of the husband and wife jointly, such increase is the property of the husband, and we are cited to Mewhirter v. Hatton, 42 Iowa, 288, and Tuttle v. The C., R. I. & P. R. Co., Id., 518. It was held in those cases that the earnings of the wife were the property of the husband, and that he could recover for an injury to her by which she was unable to perform the ordinary labor incident to the marital relation — that the wages of the wife are her property only when she carries on a separate business, or is working for wages. But the question in this case is, we think, essentially different from that determined in the cases cited. Here the wife is not claiming for her wages. She is claiming specific chattel property, the increase of other property which was owned by her. The statute nowhere makes the possession of property a test of ownership as to creditors of the husband, as was the case at common law, and under the Eevision of 1860. But it is contended that the increase of the property belongs to the husband because he was the party by whose labor, skill, and care such increase was produced. If'it had been shown that the husband lured the cows of the plaintiff for a given period, and that during such period the increase was produced, there might be force in the suggestion. But the record shows •that the husband voluntarily expended his labor, and the products thereof, in the care and keeping of his wife’s property, and it does not aqxpear that there was any agreement for compensation either in the increase of the property or otherwise. We think the property was not liable for the payment of the husband’s debts. In Webster v. Hildreth, 33 Vt., 457, it is said “equity has no jurisdiction to compel men to work for their creditors, who may perversely prefer to work for the benefit of their wives and children, and leave honest debts
Affirmed.