McKay v. Gesford

This action is in ejectment. It was brought by plaintiff as special administratrix of the estate of Julia D. Ferguson, deceased, claiming that certain real property belonged to the estate of her intestate.

Defendant admitted that the property in question had originally been the separate property of Julia D. Ferguson but averred and showed that Julia D. Ferguson, while the wife of A. H. Ferguson and while she with her husband was residing in the house upon the land in controversy, filed her declaration of homestead for the joint benefit of herself and her husband. Julia D. Ferguson having died it is conceded that the property passed to the surviving husband (Civ. Code, secs. 1263, 1265; Code Civ. Proc., secs. 1474, 1475), if at the time of her death there was, under her homestead declaration, a valid subsisting homestead upon the property. Defendant and appellant is the grantee of the husband, claiming title by deed executed by the husband after the death of his wife.

The court made voluminous findings and from them reached the conclusion that in law the homestead declaration was invalid. Judgment passed for plaintiff and from that judgment and upon the judgment-roll defendant appeals, contending that the findings do not support the judgment.

The findings are that in 1884 Julia D. Ferguson, then Julia D. Edwards,- a spinster, owned the land in controversy, and in 1884 constructed a building thereon consisting of four rooms “as and for a hotel, and to keep boarders and lodgers as she could accommodate. ’ ’ In 1888 she married A. H. Ferguson. At the time of her marriage she was residing ‘ ‘ on said premises in the hotel building thereon, and continued to keep such boarders and lodgers as could be accommodated in said hotel building, and to run said hotel and hotel business with all the customers, boarders and lodgers that could be obtained. ’ ’

All of the above quotations are from the findings, and by finding XX quoted in extenso it will be seen that the court there makes its ultimate finding of fact from the probative facts previously found. It is, of course, well settled that a general and ultimate finding such as that declared in finding XX which is drawn as a conclusion from facts previously found, cannot stand if the specific facts' upon which it is based do not support it. (Savings & Loan Soc. v. Burnett,

The question then before us is whether the ultimate finding of the court,—namely, that by reason of the facts previously found, the property could not be impressed with the homestead characteristic, is or is not supported. It was recognized at a very early day that questions of difficulty would arise under our homestead law touching the character of the property sought to be exempted under its provisions. (Ackley v. Chamberlain, 16 Cal. 181 , [ 76 Am. Dec. 516 ].) It is there said “that the question whether property devoted chiefly to business purposes can be subjected to a homestead claim is full of embarrassment.” But when it is borne in mind that the homestead law is a beneficent law calling for liberal construction (Heathman v. Holmes, 94 Cal. 291 , [ 29 Pac. 404 ]), we think all difficulty will be removed and all doubt resolved by the following suggestion: If under these identical circumstances of ownership of the property, of the construction of the building thereon and of the use of that building, Mrs. Ferguson, instead of being a married woman with a husband, had been a widow with minor children to support, and an attack had been made upon a declaration of homestead which she had duly made and recorded upon the property, would any court say, or would any one say, that, notwithstanding that it was the residence and sole and only home of herself and babies it could not be impressed with the homestead characteristics because the principal purpose and use of the premises was its conduct by her as a hotel or boarding-house in order that she might thus support herself and babies and give them a home? But the law is no different if you substitute a husband for the babies. The dominant and controlling fact still remains that this was the residence and home of the family, that it was suitable for the purpose and was used for the purpose. We are not in this ease embarrassed by difficulties which have arisen in other cases where the character of the business maintained is one entirely foreign to the conception of a home, if not repugnant to it—such a case, for example, as is instanced by Chief Justice Field in Ackley v. Chamberlain, 16 Cal. 181 , [ 76 Am. Dec. 516 ], of an effort to impress a gas factory with homestead characteristics because the owner lived in it. Here

Under the rule of liberal construction which it has been repeatedly declared should be extended to homestead laws, in every permissible case where the premises are the bona fide home of the parties, it should be held that the business conducted within the premises is not the paramount and principal purpose but the incidental and subordinate purpose, that the home is the main thing not the business; that the business is conducted to enable the parties to maintain a home and not that the parties are incidentally inhabiting the premises for the purpose of maintaining the business. Especially is this true in such a case as the one at bar where it appears from the findings that the parties during all their married life never had any other home than their six-room hotel. Nor is it of determinative import that they occupied one or another of these six rooms or shifted themselves about

It follows from the foregoing that the ultimate finding of the court to the effect that the property could not be impressed with the characteristics of a homestead is not supported by the specific facts upon which the finding is based and that the judgment itself is, therefore, unsupported by the findings.

Wherefore the judgment appealed from is reversed and the cause remanded with directions to the trial court to enter its judgment for the appellant.

Beatty, C. J., does not participate in the foregoing.