Kupferman v. Buckholts
Kupferman v. Buckholts
Opinion of the Court
In the case of Wade vs. Weslow & Co., 62 Ga., 562, it was held that the sheep purchased with the proceeds of cotton raised on a homestead were exempt from levy and sale. There the court say: “We cannot suppose that in making provision for families, the constitution intended that the head of a family should not be allowed to cultivate the farm or haul with the animals without subjecting the proceeds, or a part of them, to seizure by his creditors. In many instances, perhaps in most instances, vain indeed would be the homestead and exemption, if the labor and management of the head of the family were not added to make the property productive. If by industry, economy and thrift a surplus is produced over and above what is consumed by the family, and this surplus is invested, the investment, we think, goes to enlarge the corpus, just as ■it would do in the case of an ordinary trust estate.” And the learned judge delivering the opinion goes on to argue how useless would be the provision for a family, unless such was the meaning of the constitution, and how the policy of the state would be thwarted, unless this construction were put upon the homestead and exemption laws. It seems to us that the argument becomes stronger in a case like this now before us, where the exemption is, under section 2040 of the Code, very inadequate at best, and hardly the full amount in this case which that old exemption act allowed of personalty, with no realty at all. Surely the principle should not be applied with less liberality where, as in the case at bar, the family had no land at all, and its head operated upon rented land.
So in 63 Ga., 378, Johnson vs. Franklin & Whitney, it was held that, where farm products were set apart as an
Ve do not say that, if the head of a family has property of his own individual right — either land or personalty— wherewith, in conjunction with that exempted, he makes increase in the shape of other property, justice and equity would not require that a portion thereof should go to his creditoi's; but where, as in this case, the head of the family works and manages for his wife and-children a small exemption, so as to enlarge it, and hires or buys a mule or other means, to be paid for out of what that exemption makes, supplemented by his own labor and management, we do say that the increase is, to all intents and purposes — in all reason and sense, u.nder the policy of the laws of homestead and exemption — the property of the family, while the family is unbroken, and only the reversion after the family’s extinction, is the individual estate of the head, and subject then to his debts.
Judgment affirmed.
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