Brackley

The appellant and respondent, husband and wife, shortly before this action was commenced separated and thereafter continued to live separate and apart. On the seventeenth day of August, 1921, the husband commenced the action and in the second amended complaint alleged that the plaintiff and the defendant are husband and wife; that the plaintiff and the defendant are the owners of certain real estate (describing two lots in the city of Hawthorne, county of Los Angeles); that said real estate stands of record in the name of the defendant but said property is the joint property of the plaintiff and the defendant; that the value of said real estate is $4,000; that the plaintiff is the owner of an undivided one-half interest therein and that the defendant claims to own the whole of said property and that the said property is her separate property. On the foregoing facts the plaintiff asked a decree establishing his title of record. The defendant filed an answer in which she denied any ownership rested in the plaintiff and alleged that she was the sole owner and that on the twenty-fourth day of August, 1920, about two months prior to her marriage, that she bought the property from J. I.…