Edward Douglass White

“ We say this because, as a necessary result of the findings below, all the property either belonged to the husband at the date of the marriage or was afterwards acquired by him as a reinvestment of funds derived from such property owned by him at the marriage. It follows, therefore, that the rights of the wife arose simply either from an increased value of property or assets brought by the husband into marriage, or as a result of the falling into the community of the revenues of the property of the husband. ”

“ In effect, the husband can dissipate the goods of the community; he can lose, destroy, break, and dilapidate. Maritus potest perdere, dissipare, abuti; this is an elementary axiom of the Palace (of Justice) . The wife has no right to call the husband to account, no damage to obtain for his acts. Hence it is true, indeed, that the husband is more than an administrator: he is an administrator com libera.' Ibid. p. 138, No. 158.
See, to the same effect, the copious collection of authority found under article 1421 of the Code Napoleon, in the Fuzier-Herman edition of that Code, supra. ”

“ Third, if there was due the wife any amount on account of her interest in the community, and such interest had not been forfeited, was she entitled, as a divorced wife, to provoke a liquidation of the community, and to a degree in her favor for the amount, if any, of her interest in such community? ”

“ We shall not undertake to review them in detail or state at length our conclusions concerning them, contenting ourselves with saying that, after examining them all, we think they are without foundation, either because fundamentally unsound or because the objections concerned not the admissibility but the mere weight of the evidence offered or rejected, or because the record is not in such a condition as to enable us to overcome the strong impression we form that no prejudicial error resulted from the rulings complained of. ”

“ The assertion of the want of jurisdiction in the court below rests, however, not upon a denial of power in that court to have entertained the controversy if the suit had been originally brought there, but upon the contention that, as a defendant other than the husband was a resident and citizen of Porto Rico, the cause was improperly removed from the local court. ”

“ The court below adopted the facts found by the master and reiterated them in the findings in the nature of a special verdict, made for the purposes of the present appeal. By those findings all the charges of fraudulent simulation relied upon by the wife were found to be true, and, as a legal conclusion, all the property and assets to which the simulated contracts related were held to belong to the husband. ”