Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 3).pdf/307

her contract, and the case does not fall within any exception to the general doctrine of nonliability known to courts of law or equity, we must return to statutory law for our guide. Several sections of our statutes are referred to by counsel for plaintiff as sustaining his contention that the defendant Ellen A. Stevens is liable upon the note which she signed as surety for her husband. The one which bears most directly upon the question is § 2590 of the Comp. Laws. It declares that “either husband or wife may enter into any engagement or transaction with the other, or with any other person, respecting property, which cither might, if unmarried, subject, in transactions between themselves, to the general rules which control the actions of persons occupying confidential relations with each other, as defined by the title on trusts.” This statute is very broad in its language. It is true that the contract must be one respecting property; but we cannot assent to the view that it must relate to the married woman's separate property. It would have been easy to have said so in express terms had such been the purpose of the lawmaking power. When the legislature, has established the single and simple test that the contract must be one respecting property generally, we have no right to amend the law, and thereby inject into the act a further limitation which will exclude many contracts respecting proper. To add another limitation by interpretation would ignore the drift of legislation on the subject of the rights and liabilities of married women. The current runs steadily and strongly in the direction of emancipation of the wife, and of the imposition of responsibility commensurate with her increased rights. Why the words “respecting property” were inserted in the law it is not necessary to determine. It is sufficient for the purposes of this case to give full effect to them. This we do by holding that any contract respecting property is binding upon the wife, whether the agreement does or does not relate to her own separate estate. Some courts have looked upon the married women as needing protection from her husband in matters relating to property. We are not in accord with these