Norris v. Vaughan (256 S.W.2d 156, 1952)

LUMPKIN, Justice.

On August 16, 1941, the appellee, Hal Vaughan, married Beulah Hunsaker. On May 17, 1947, Mrs. Vaughan died intestate. Other than her husband, she was survived by the appellant, Edith Norris, her daughter by a previous marriage.

This suit was brought by the appellant and her husband, C. R. Norris, for an accounting and to recover from the appellee the property, money and estate to which Edith Norris and her husband (both of whom being hereafter referred, to as “appellant”) alleged she was' entitled as her mother’s only heir. She asked that the appellee itemize everything he owned at the time of the marriage, the receipts and expenditures made during the marriage and all the properties on hand at the time of his wifels death. The appellant alleged that the accounting would disclose that she owns an interest in the property in excess of $60,000, and she- asked that judgment be rendered for title to and possession of the property, money and estate to which the court would find she is .entitled. The ap-pellee answered by pleading, in effect, that most of the property which the appellant alleged to be community was not community but separate since it either had been his before his marriage to ' the appellant’s mother or had been acquired with separate funds after his marriage.

At the time of his marriage, the appellee was a member of three partnerships: (1) The Shamrock Gas Company, an organization which supplies natural gas to the City of Shamrock, Texas, through its own distributing system; (2) The Vaughan Well Company, an organization engaged in drilling gas wells and in the sale of gas to the Shamrock Gas Company; and (3) Pendle-ton and Vaughan, an organization engaged in .the drilling of oil and gas wells and in the production and sale of these minerals. At the time of the marriage the appellee owned seven gas wells which throughout the record are referred to as the Pakan Wells.

After the case went to trial, the court, on its own motion, appointed an auditor and ordered him to prepare án audit and inventory of the disbursements and receipts of the Shamrock Gas Company, the Vaughan Well Company, Pendleton and Vaughan, and Hal H. Vaughan for the' period August 16, 1941, to May 17, 1947. Later, this report was supplemented with one carrying the audit forward from May 17, 1947, to October 31, 1951.

After the audit was prepared and filed,' the court entered its judgment. It found that all the gas wells in which the appellee owns an interest were his separate estate and property; that there was no commingling of the funds received by the appellee ■during his marriage but that all of the funds, both separate and community, could "be traced by the audit. The court found that at the time of his marriage the appellee owned an undivided one-fourth interest in the Shamrock Gas Company, a partnership 'Composed of W. S. Pendleton, B. F. Holmes, A. N. Holmes and the appellee; that the