## Facts

- Carlos Y. Benavides, Jr. and Leticia R. Benavides were married and lived in Texas.
- Years before the marriage, in 1990, the Benavides Family Mineral Trust was created as an irrevocable trust to hold, manage, and control a large mineral estate for its beneficiaries.
- Carlos was named a participating beneficiary before the marriage and, under the trust terms, was entitled to monthly distributions.
- The trust provided that the monthly payment to Carlos was the net balance of revenues from the trust estate (such as mineral bonuses and royalties) after certain expenses.
- The trust instrument treated those receipts as trust “revenue” and identified them as trust income rather than as trust corpus.
- After Carlos and Leticia married, a Webb County Court at Law appointed Shirley Hale Mathis as temporary guardian of Carlos’s person and estate.
- Following her appointment, Mathis notified the co-trustees and demanded that all funds distributable to Carlos be distributed to her as guardian.
- Leticia, through counsel, demanded one-half of all distributions payable to Carlos during the marriage, asserting the distributions were community property.
- The co-trustees refused Leticia’s demand, and Mathis also refused to pay any portion of the distributions to Leticia.
- Leticia sued Mathis asserting (1) tortious interference with contract and (2) money had and received, based on the theory that Mathis wrongfully withheld Leticia’s community-property share.
- Mathis moved for both traditional and no-evidence summary judgment on Leticia’s claims; the trial court granted summary judgment without specifying the ground and rendered a severed, final judgment for appeal.

## Issues

1. Whether income distributions paid during marriage from a pre-marriage irrevocable family mineral trust to a spouse-beneficiary are the beneficiary’s separate property or community property.
2. If the distributions are the beneficiary’s separate property, whether the non-beneficiary spouse can maintain claims for money had and received and tortious interference with contract based on an asserted one-half interest in those distributions.

## Decision

- The court of appeals affirmed the trial court’s summary judgment in favor of Mathis.
- The court held the monthly trust distributions paid to Carlos were his separate property, not community property.
- Because Leticia had no ownership interest in the distributions, her claims for money had and received and tortious interference failed as a matter of law.

## Legal Principles

- Under Texas marital-property law, separate property includes property owned or claimed by a spouse before marriage, and characterization is generally determined by the inception-of-title rule.
- A spouse’s beneficial interest in an irrevocable trust that arises before marriage is a separate-property interest.
- In determining whether trust payments are separate or community, courts look to the nature of the beneficiary’s right under the trust instrument and whether the payments are attributable to the beneficiary’s pre-marriage separate interest.
- A money-had-and-received claim requires proof that the defendant holds money that, in equity and good conscience, belongs to the plaintiff; a plaintiff with no legal or equitable ownership interest in the funds cannot recover.
- Tortious interference with contract requires a protectable interest connected to the contract or expectancy at issue; a spouse who is neither a party to nor a beneficiary of the trust agreement, and who has no ownership interest in the distributions, cannot base the claim on an incorrect community-property theory.
- When the trial court grants summary judgment without stating the basis, the judgment must be affirmed on appeal if any asserted summary-judgment ground supports it.

## Conclusion

The Fourth Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment for the temporary guardian because Carlos’s right to receive monthly mineral-trust distributions arose from a pre-marriage irrevocable trust interest that remained his separate property; without an ownership interest in those distributions, Leticia could not recover from the guardian on restitution or tortious-interference theories.


Benavides v. Mathis, 433 S.W.3d 59 (2014)