Estate of Goodale

Mrs. Ellen E. Stouder, the widow of John Stouder, petitions for a homestead in the estate of David Goodale. Mrs. Stouder was the widow of David Goodale before her marriage to Stouder.

Petitioner claims that statutes, such as that under which a probate homestead is given, should receive a broad and liberal construction. This is admitted; but the construction for which petitioner contends would be a perversion. We must construe the statute as it stands; not substitute a statute by a strained and false construction. To pursue the latter course would be to perpetrate a dangerous and vicious piece of judicial legislation.

To show the liberality with which our supreme court have interpreted the homestead law, petitioner quotes a passage from Smyth on Homesteads, in which a case (probably Clements v. Stanton, 47 Cal. 60 ) is alluded to, where it was decided that a declaration of homestead by a married woman was properly acknowledged, although not acknowledged as a conveyance of her separate real property by a married woman was required to be acknowledged. But the homestead law did not require a declaration to be acknowledged by a married woman, as she was required to acknowledge a…