## Facts

- Plaintiffs, a copartnership engaged in financing loans, loaned money to Mack Gallinatti during his marriage to defendant Edith Gallinatti.
- To secure the loan, Mack executed a promissory note and a chattel mortgage covering the community household furniture and furnishings located in the family home.
- Mack signed his own name and forged Edith’s signature on both the note and the chattel-mortgage documents; both signatures were acknowledged before a notary public.
- Edith did not consent to the signing of her name and had no knowledge of the note or the chattel mortgage.
- Mack died shortly after the transaction; the chattel mortgage was recorded one day after his death.
- Edith was appointed executrix of Mack’s will.
- Plaintiffs presented a claim against the estate. Edith rejected it as a secured claim but allowed it as an unsecured claim.
- Plaintiffs then sued Edith, individually and as executrix, to foreclose the chattel mortgage on the household furniture and furnishings.
- It was undisputed that Edith did not learn of the chattel mortgage until after Mack’s death and therefore had no opportunity to challenge it during his lifetime.
- The trial court ruled for plaintiffs and decreed that the sums owed were secured by a chattel mortgage on the decedent’s interest in the community household furniture and furnishings. Edith appealed.

## Issues

1. Under former California Civil Code § 172, is a husband’s chattel mortgage on community household furniture and furnishings, made without the wife’s written consent (and with her signature forged), void or merely voidable at the wife’s election?
2. If the mortgage is not void, may it be enforced as a lien against the decedent husband’s interest in the community household furnishings in a foreclosure action after his death?

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment and affirmed the order denying Edith’s motion for a new trial.
- The court held that a chattel mortgage on community household furniture executed by the husband without the wife’s written consent is not automatically void under Civil Code § 172; it is voidable.
- On these facts, plaintiffs could foreclose to the extent recognized by the judgment: the chattel mortgage secured the debt against the decedent husband’s interest in the community household furniture and furnishings.

## Legal Principles

- Former Civil Code § 172 limited the husband’s power to sell, convey, or encumber community household furniture and furnishings by requiring the wife’s written consent.
- A transaction that violates § 172 is not necessarily void; it may be treated as voidable, meaning the wife may have a right to repudiate rather than the instrument being a nullity from the outset.
- The absence of the wife’s written consent (including where her signature is forged) prevents treating the instrument as her authorized act, but it does not eliminate the possibility that the creditor may enforce the mortgage against the husband’s interest as determined by the court.
- A probate claim allowance as unsecured does not, by itself, decide whether a creditor may pursue a separate foreclosure remedy against property interests recognized by a chattel mortgage.

## Conclusion

Dynan v. Gallinatti holds that, despite Civil Code § 172’s requirement of the wife’s written consent to encumber community household furnishings, the husband’s unauthorized chattel mortgage was not void but voidable, and the judgment enforcing the mortgage as a lien on the decedent husband’s interest in the community household furniture and furnishings was affirmed.


Dynan v. Gallinatti, 197 P.2d 391 (1948)