Keller v. Myers
Keller v. Myers
Opinion of the Court
The opinion of the Court was delivered by
Joseph A. ICeller, the appellant, on the eighth February, 1872, obtained in the Circuit Court for Orangeburg County a judgment against Levi Myers and others, which was duly entered on the same day, and, on the next, execution thereon was lodged in the Sheriff’s office, on which, on the tenth, a levy was made of two several tracts of land — -the one containing two hundred and five acres (more or less), and the other one hundred and three acres (more or less), as the property of the said Myers.
Proceedings under the Homestead Act were instituted by Myers,
When Myers claimed his homestead it was by virtue of the provision of the Constitution and the Act of 1868 “to determine and pepetuate the homestead,” (14 Stat., 19). He acquired no further nor more extended rights in regard to it than were thereunder given, and if any succeeding Legislature in any manner changed or varied the laws in respect to the homestead privilege, either by increasing or diminishing its extent, his rights, as established and confirmed, could not be thereby affected. His claim of homestead had been administered; there was nothing further to be adjudicated, and subsequent change in the law could not operate on a transaction which had been consummated through judicial proceedings.—See Taylor vs. Miller, 13 How., 293; Frierson vs. Westberry, 11 Rich., 335.
It seems to have been the express intention of the Act of March 13, 1872, to extend the provisions, under its third Section, only to cases of homestead assigned under it. Its language admits of no other conclusion, and Myers having already accepted the 205 acres of land as his homestead under the Act of 1868, although it was assessed at only five hundred dollars, has no right to any further extension under the Act of March, 1872, for, by its own avowal, the benefit which he now seeks applies only to assignments of homestead through the force of its first Section.
In the consideration of the case below it would seem that the Constitution and the Act of 1868 were construed as securing a right of homestead in real estate to the full value of one thousand dollars. A reference to both will, however, show that it is not to
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