Martínez Llonín v. Fernández Porrero
Martínez Llonín v. Fernández Porrero
Opinion of the Court
delivered tbe opinion of tbe Court.
Tbe defendant took tbis appeal from a judgment declaring tbat tbe property be acquired during bis marriage is community property belonging to tbe conjugal partnership.
The defendant admitted in his answer to the complaint that all those facts are true, but alleged that his wife refused to come with him to this island without justified reasons for her refusal, on which she insisted afterwards notwithstanding the letters he wrote her to make her come to him; that she arrived at this island in 1905 without giving notice to her husband, and lodged in the house of her brother, the plaintiff, in Río Piedras, from where she moved to that of the defendant, without a reconciliation having taken place between them, and where she remained because of the defendant’s wish to avoid a public scandal and a personal quarrel with her brother, the plaintiff; herein; that during all the years her wife remained in the defendant’s house in Río Pie-dras, she lived as if she were a guest and refused to have sexual intercourse with the defendant; that while it is true that she was a party, together with the defendant, to a certain public document for the sale of a property, this was due to the demand of the purchasers, and that he had to pay
The plaintiffs filed a demurrer to that answer, on the ground that the same does not state facts sufficient to constitute a defense or counterclaim. The lower court sustained that demurrer and, the defendant not having filed another answer, at plaintiff’s request, rendered a judgment on the pleadings.
The appellant does not deny on this appeal that when he married a partnership was created by law between the spouses by provision of the law, whereby the husband and wife are to share equally, upon the dissolution of the marriage, the acquests or gains obtained by either of them indiscriminately during the same marriage.
In view of the foregoing, the only question which we have to decide is whether, on the assumption that they a,re true, the facts alleged in the answer, which refer to acts or words of the deceased wife, constitute a defense. In o]ther words, whether for the reason that the spouses were separated for some time and of the wife’s refusal to fulfill the conjugal duty during the twenty-two years she lived here in the house of her husband, she has lost her right to share the property acquired by the defendant or, as he puts it, whether her heir is precluded from obtaining half of the gains made during marriage, upon its dissolution by the death of the wife.
The law which created the conjugal partnership between husband and wife did not establish exceptions thereto, despite the fact that the legislator could not ignore that there are marriages in which the spouses live separately for many years and sometimes until the death of one of them puts an end to such partnership. Therefore, in the absence of any provision of the law regarding that, matter of exceptions, we are prone to create them. That is a function of the legislative, not of the judicial power. Nor did the Supreme Court
The judgment appealed from must he affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.