In Re Snider's Estate
In Re Snider's Estate
Opinion of the Court
This is an appeal from an order of the district court on trial de novo denying application of Nellie R. Snider for a probate homestead in: Southeast Quarter of Section 10, Township 7 North, Range 17 West I. M. in Kiowa County, Oklahoma.
The evidence as a whole in this case is to the positive effect that Elias F. Snider, the deceased husband of Nellie R. Snider, owned the property in question for many years; he and his first Wife and their son, Louis Fort Snider, had lived on the property and made it their home from 1909 until the death of the first wife on March 9, 1927; three days before the death of the first wife Louis Fort Snider, an adult at the time, married and with his wife continued to live in the home of his parents and has lived on said property ever since; about a month after the first wife’s death the house burned down; it was immediately rebuilt with proceeds from the insurance on the house and Louis Fort Snider and his wife continued to occupy the house as rebuilt; the deceased made his home with them; deceased rebuilt the home for his son, Louis; Louis, the son, and his father owned jointly the 160 acres adjoining the land here in question, which was called the “West Place”; it had a tenant house on it; the son and father farmed the two places together, as one unit, until 1939, when the son took over all farming operations, the father giving
The application of Nellie Snider for a .probate homestead in the farm was resisted on the theory that the farm ras a homestead had been abandoned.
, In consideration of all the testimony, the trial court found that the land in question was not the homestead of the deceased at the time of his death because it had been abandoned as such.
Plaintiff in error makes numerous assignments of error, which she argues under four propositions: (1) that the premises constituted the homestead of the decedent at the time of his second marriage; (2) that the right of the surviving spouse to occupy and possess the probate homestead is not dependent on prior actual residence thereon by such spouse; (3) that the evidence shows no ■intention on the part of decedent to abandon his homestead and the finding of the court to the contrary is against the clear weight of the evidence; and (4) that no act of the husband could deprive the wife of her homestead right in the land, once established and acquired, without her consent.
That it was his homestead after the death of his first wife because that character had attached before her death is certain, and it remained his homestead until abandonment. Greenshaw v. Brown, 96 Okla. 11, 219 P. 934.
Conceding for the sake of argument that his occupancy of the old home after his marriage to plaintiff in error, though she never lived in it, constituted the occupancy of his second family, and conceding for the sake of /argument that he could not abandon the land as a homestead without her
Judgment affirmed.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- In Re Snider's Estate. Snider v. Snider.
- Status
- Published
- Syllabus
- (Syllabus.) HOMESTEAD — APPEAL AND ERROR — Sufficiency of evidence to sustain judgment that tract of land was not homestead of a deceased spouse at time of his death because abandoned by him. A judgment of a court of equity that a tract of land was not the homestead of a deceased spouse at the time of his death because abandoned by him will not be disturbed on appeal unless clearly against the weight of the evidence.