Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 3.djvu/479

 472 FEDERAL REPORTER. �owner of the premises aforesaid, and that on or abaut Feb- ruary i, 18G8, he conveyed said premises to his daughter, the defendant XarifaJ. Pailing, with intent to prevent the plaintiiï from acquiring any right in the premises by said decree ; that at the commencement of said suit for divorce the plaintiiï did not know that said Barrett was the owner of said premises, and that he died shortly after the decree of divorce was ob- tained; that said Xarifa bas been in the possession of said premises for the past six years, and received the rents and profits thereof, amounting to $500 per anuum. �Upon these facts the plaintiiï claims that by the laws of Oregon, and by virtue of the decree aforesaid, she became and was entitled to one-third of the premises. This claim ia made under section 495 of the Oregon Code of Civil Pro- cedure, which provides that "whenever a marriage shall be declared void, or dissolved, the party at whose prayer such decree shall be made, shall, m ail cases, be entitled to the undivided one-third part in his or her individual right, infee, of the whole of the real estate owned by the other at the time of such decree, in addition to the further decree for maintenance provided for in section 497; and it shall be the duty of the court, in ail such cases, to enter a decree in accordance with this provision." As it originally stood in the Code, this sec- tion simply provided that upon the dissolution of a marriage the real property of the parties should be discharged from any claim or interest of the other therein; provided, if the mar- riage was dissolved on account of the adultery or conviction of a felony of either party, then the innocent party should be entitled as tenant in dower, or by the curtesy, as the case might be, in the real property of the other, the same as if that other were dead. The statute declared this to be the legal efl'ect and operation of the decree, and it was neither necessary nor proper that the pleadings or decree should allege or contain anything on the subject. The section was amended as it now stands on December 20, 1865, and the purpose of it is manifest. It is to give the prevailing and so far innocent party in this suit, in ail cases — no mutter what the cause of divorce — absolutely one-third of the other's real property, as ����