California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from Reardon's Estate, In re, 243 Cal.App.2d 221, 52 Cal.Rptr. 68 (Cal. App. 1966):
2. The words 'void' or 'invalid', when appearing in statutes which are not for the benefit of the public at large, are regarded as equivalent to 'voidable' where none other than a particular person or class of persons is the object of the statutory protection. In Gee v. Moore, 14 Cal. 472, 474--475, alienation by the husband only of homesteaded property was sustained although the statute declared that such alienation, without the wife's acknowledged signature, was invalid; where, in fact, the wife had died leaving no children and there was no one living whom the statute was designed to protect. The court pointed to the parallel with a holding that despite a statute declaring usurious mortgages to be utterly void, such mortgages are void only as against the mortgagor and those holding under him (p. 475).
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