Bailey v. Comings

DILLON, Circuit Judge. The district court sustained the claim of the bankrupt to a homestead exemption under the Missouri statute on that subject. The assignee contests the correctness of this ruling and brings the case here for review. I have read the evidence contained in the record, covering over one hundred pages. The statute of Missouri gives to each housekeeper or head of a family resident in the county “his home 368 stead used by him as such,” to the extent of not over one hundred and sixty acres, and in value not over one thousand five hundred dollars. 1 Wag. St. pp. 603, 604, 697. Certain other limited exemptions are made to each “head of a family.” If the bankrupt is entitled to a homestead, I am of opinion that that right was not abandoned by his residence at his brother’s in Monroe City, he having left his property on the home farm, except his wearing apparel and a few tools, and having gone to Monroe City because of his feeble health, and to be with his brothers, and having resumed his usual residence on the farm in which the exemption is claimed, before filing the petition in bankruptcy. 1 am of opinion that if it was essential to maintain the bankrupt’s claim to the exemption to hold that the Algers (who were tenants under a special arrangement, and not relatives or dependents of the bankrupt) were part of or constituted the bankrupt’s family, that this position could not be sustained. The bankrupt had never been married, and if he had any family, it was constituted of himself and his widowed sister, Mrs. Met-calf. Years before, when the farm was being opened and improved, two unmarried sisters lived with him and were then part of his family. One of these sisters died, the other married Mr. Metcalf, say about 1869. She resided with her husband until his death in 1870. She was without children. I infer she had very limited means. In 1872, she returned to the bankrupt’s farm as her home, brought her household goods there, and managed his house and household affairs. She paid no board. She was quite advanced in years, her health was poor, and the work was too hard; and by the advice of her physician she went in 1873 to reside with her brothers (two of them living as one family) at Monroe City, about twelve miles distant. She always paid her board at her brothers in Monroe City. The bankrupt’s health was also poor, and about the same time he left his farm with the Algers, and went to live with the same brothers at Monroe City, doing enough about the brothers’ mill to equal the value of his board. In the spring of 1876, shortly before the bankruptcy, the bankrupt went back to the farm. The brothers who owned the mill at Monroe City failed. Mrs. Metcalf went east and did not return to the farm until after the bankruptcy. If we regard the direct statements of the bankrupt and Mrs. Metcalf, as to their purposes and intentions, the homestead right exists. While the facts cloud or render somewhat doubtful these declared purposes and intentions, on the whole, I think the circumstances, the undisputed facts, show that the right exists. I am clear that the right, if it ever existed, was not abandoned by the bankrupt's residence at Monroe. The case turns upon the question whether Mrs. Met-calf was part of the bankrupt’s family. She lived there years before her marriage. It was her home prior to that event. After her husband’s death she went there, and her brother received her as a member of his family, gave her a room, and she was in charge of his household and domestic affairs. She intended to remain there. She had no home of her own. Her household goods were there. She paid no board, and was not expected to. Her health failed, and she went, under the advice of her physician, to Monroe. Her relations to her brothers there were very different from her relations with her brother the bankrupt. Mrs. Metcalf says in her testimony that the bankrupt’s house was regarded by her as her home, and she explains her absence therefrom by the condition of her health. The case is a close one, but under all the circumstances, I am of opinion that the district court was justified in regarding the bankrupt as a housekeeper or head of a family within the meaning of the Missouri statute, and its order in this respect is affirmed.