Greenfield

On this appeal the controlling question is whether a judgment entered in a prior action, and found by the trial court to bar appellant’s claims herein, was in fact a final adjudication.

The subject of the present action, one in interpleader, is the right to the sum of $12,549.60. This fund has been deposited in court by plaintiffs. It represents the balance due upon an approved claim of defendant A. W. Mather against the estate which plaintiffs are administering, and said defendant and his former wife, defendant Dorothy Devore Mather, are chief claimants to it. They joined issue by cross-complaints and answers. The wife claimed the money under the terms of a property settlement agreement or purported assignment from the husband. The husband alleged that because the agreement was made in Hawaii, where a wife is not authorized to contract with her husband, it was void and he prayed that it be cancelled. In answer to this pleading the wife averred that the validity of the agreement had been conclusively established in a prior action, and as a plea in bar she set up two purported judgments entered in her favor in said prior action.

When the present cause came on for trial, the wife…