129 Pa. 366 | Pa. | 1889
Opinion,
The single question presented is whether the act,of June 3, 1887, P. L. 332, known as the Married Persons’ Property Act, authorizes a wife to sue her husband directly and in her own name for money received by him from, her separate estate.
Section 4 of the act reads: “ Husband and wife shall have the same civil remedies upon contracts in their own name and right, against all persons, for the protection and recovery of their separate property, as unmarried persons.”
If we look not only at the general intent of the act, but more closely at the language used, we are led to the same result. The purpose is not only expressed broadly in apt language once, but is repeated and reiterated with superabundant caution. In this varied and detailed consideration, it is impossible to suppose that so important a branch of the subject as the right of action between husband and wife should not have been thought of, or being thought of should not have been granted in unequivocal terms, if intended to be granted at all. To legislators, versed in the principles of the common law, it would immediately suggest itself as a distinct and momentous departure from the legal policy of centuries, which ordinary phraseology, however general, would not commonly be understood to intend, and it is inconceivable that under such circumstances, it should be granted obscurely and by implication. As said by Woodwakd, J., in Ritter v. Ritter, 31 Pa. 398, “if the legislature meant that such actions as the present should be sustained, they had command of a very copious language in which to express their will.” The acts of April 11, 1856, P. L. 315, and June 11,1879, P. L. 126, make provision for actions by the wife against the husband in cases, of desertion, or neglect or refusal to support, and we conclude that the legislature thought this remedy ample, without extending it to suits between parties living amicably together in the marital relation.
This view is confirmed almost to a demonstration by the legislative1 history of the act of 1887. The fourth section follows closely the English Married Woman’s Property Act of 1882, 45 and.46 Viet., c. 75, Law Rep. Stat., 1882, p. 458; and, as originally introduced into the senate, it provided, as that act does, that “ husband and wife shall have the same civil remedies upon contracts in their own name and right against all persons, including each other” etc.: Legislative Record, 1887, p 896. This specific provision which put the change in the previous law into that precise, definite, and unquestionable form which its importance demanded, was struck out, and the
It is argued that as the language is the same with respect to both husband and wife, it must authorize both or neither to sue |he other, and, therefore, if it does not authorize the husband to sue the wife, we shall have the absurd result that the legislature has solemnly conferred upon a married man the same right to sue strangers that an unmarried man possesses. This is not without plausibility, and, if the section stood alone, would be of much force. But taken in its connection, it is an additional link in the argument that the husband’s rights, except as involved in the regulation of his wife’s, were not intended to be affected at all. The same may be said of the phrase, “ their separate property,” in the same section. What is a husband’s separate property ? In the language of the law, such a phrase is as absurd as the result pictured in the argument referred to. In truth, the real explanation of both phrases, entirely unsuitable as they stand, is the failure to notice the effect of striking out the words, “ including each other,” contained in the act as originally introduced. With these words left in, the absurdity as to suits by the husband disappears, and the phrase “separate property,” though not elegant as to legal style, is clear and definite in its meaning.
There are several other changes from the first draft to the act as finally passed, such as the striking out of § 3 of the power to convey real estate without the husband joining, and the attaching of a proviso to the contrary to § 1, etc., which indicate that the act as originally introduced was much more radical in its changes than the legislature was willing to pass, and we think it clear that the authority to sue each other was one of the proposed changes which were refused a sanction.
One further consideration which may be adverted to, is the hardship and injustice which might arise as to past matters by the grant of a universal and unrestricted right to sue upon a claim which the defendant may have had no reason to expect or foresee. The present case affords a striking example of these dangers. Of course, I do not speak of the moral merits of the case, for of these I know nothing, but of the legal
Judgment reversed.