## Facts

- Mrs. Adele E. Leonard, a married woman, owned several parcels of Galveston real estate as her separate property.
- Gus I. Arnold, as administrator of a decedent’s estate, held a judgment against Mrs. Leonard’s husband, St. Clair Leonard, for a debt incurred during marriage (a community indebtedness).
- Arnold attempted to satisfy the judgment by garnishing tenants and seizing the rents and revenues produced during marriage from Mrs. Leonard’s separate real property.
- Mrs. Leonard sought and obtained an injunction preventing Arnold from collecting or subjecting those rents to the judgment.
- Mrs. Leonard relied on statutes declaring rents and revenues from a wife’s separate realty to be her separate property and protecting them from the husband’s creditors.
- Arnold challenged the statutes as unconstitutional under the Texas Constitution’s definition of a married woman’s separate property.

## Issues

1. Whether the Texas Legislature may, by statute, classify rents and revenues derived during marriage from a wife’s separate real property as the wife’s separate property.
2. If the Legislature lacks that power, whether such rents and revenues are community property subject to community debts and the husband’s judgment creditors.

## Decision

- The court held the Legislature could not expand the Texas Constitution’s definition of the wife’s separate property.
- Statutory provisions purporting to make rents and revenues from the wife’s separate lands part of her separate estate were unconstitutional and void.
- Rents and revenues produced during marriage from the wife’s separate realty are community property.
- Because they are community property, those rents and revenues are subject to community debts, including the judgment against the husband.

## Legal Principles

- When the Constitution specifies the circumstances under which property is separate, the Legislature may not add to or subtract from those constitutional categories by ordinary statute.
- The Texas Constitution’s definition of the wife’s separate property is limited to property owned or claimed before marriage and property acquired after marriage by gift, devise, or descent.
- Legislative authority to “define the rights” of spouses in separate and community property permits regulation of management and remedies, but not reclassification of property contrary to the Constitution.
- Income produced during marriage from separate real property (rents and revenues) falls outside the constitutional definition of separate property and therefore is community property unless it qualifies as a constitutional separate-property acquisition.
- Community property is liable for community debts, permitting a creditor holding a community judgment to reach community income streams.

## Conclusion

The court invalidated statutes attempting to treat rents and revenues from a wife’s separate real property as her separate property, holding instead that such rents are community property and may be reached to satisfy community debts owed by the husband.


Arnold v. Leonard, 273 S.W. 799 (Tex. 1925)