Bisel v. Bisel

Sobeloff, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is an appeal by a wife from a decree dismissing her bill of complaint for a divorce a mensa for desertion. A similar bill by the husband against the wife was also filed, and dismissed by the Court, but from this action no appeal was taken. Testimony was taken before an Examiner, and the case was decided by the Chancellor upon the transcript.

He did not have the advantage of seeing the parties and their witnesses, and this court is therefore not in a less favorable position than the Chancellor to judge the credibility of the witnesses and to determine the weight to be given to their testimony. When the parties were married in February, 1950, the husband was 22 years of age and the wife 18. The husband and the wife both worked, but when she became pregnant her employment was terminated. Their daughter was born the following January.

The parties lived in Takoma Park from the time of their marriage till June, 1950, when they purchased in their joint names a house in Silver Spring. Their equity in the property seems to be small. For reasons not apparent in the record they did not immediately move into the house, and for four months, until October 1, 1950, they lived with the wife’s mother in Washington. From then, however, until February 14, 1951, they did live in their Silver Spring home.

A few weeks after the birth of their child the husband was ordered to return to duty in the Navy. His services were performed chiefly in Philadelphia, and he was discharged in June, 1952. About the time the husband went into the Navy he turned over the Silver Spring home to his father who, together with his eight children, occupied the place. ¹¹¹ During the son’s absence the father assisted in making the mortgage payments. The appellant protested this arrangement, but it seems to have been carried out despite her failure to sign a deed or any other papers.

She thereupon returned to her mother’s home in Washington. The appellee, however, visited her there from time to time. In March, 1951, according to the appellee’s testimony, he made arrangements to rent an apartment in a public housing project in Philadelphia, in close proximity to his station, and he invited his wife and daughter to live with him there. The wife’s version was that while the husband told her that he could find quarters in Philadelphia, he had never told her that he had actually found them or even looked for them.

At all events, the wife testified, “I couldn’t see going because I had no security whatsoever, had no place to go and knew no one there, and Susan was so young, I couldn’t take her, and when I was at my mother’s we had a roof over our heads and I could depend on her, which I had done many times.” The Chancellor characterized the evidence as far from convincing that the husband could have supported his wife and child in Philadelphia, and he held the wife not guilty of desertion in failing to leave her mother’s home to go to the insecurity and uncertainties that would have awaited her in Philadelphia. Cf. Hoffhines v. Hoffhines, 146 Md. 350, 357 , 126 A. 112, 115 ; Bennett v. Bennett, 197 Md. 408 , 79 A. 2d 513 ; Blair v. Blair, 199 Md. 9, 14 , 85 A. 2d 442, 445 ; Smoot v. Smoot, 200 Md. 216 , 88 A. 2d 465 . In the latter part of the summer the wife, accompanied by the child, went to Detroit to visit friends of her mother.

On one of the husband’s visits to Washington to see the wife he learned that she was in