Egress v. Egress

Sobeloff, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This appeal presents for review the action of the Circuit Court No. 2 of Baltimore City in dismissing a wife’s ⁵¹² bill for a decree of divorce a mensa on the ground of cruelty and granting such a decree to the husband on his cross-bill based on the wife’s alleged desertion. Alexander and Yolanda Egress lived together from the time of their marriage in April, 1945, until May 21, 1952. Two children were born to them; one is six years of age and the other is five.

Temporarily their custody has been awarded to the father, and the mother does not appeal from this order. While the wife made the broad claim that her husband “started beating on me” shortly after the marriage, she testified to only three episodes. The first was very trivial. On the New Year’s Eve following their marriage she was leaving the Lord Baltimore Hotel with her husband and his brother when, she says, “he struck me and pushed me up against the wall saying ‘you better leave this man alone’ ”.

The reason, according to the wife, was a fit of jealousy, but the event seemingly did not seriously disrupt the domestic harmony of the couple, for a notation in her diary a few months later, on their first wedding anniversary, characterized their married life as a happy one. The next assault to which she testified was on February 19, 1952, when it is claimed the husband struck her, but she did not tell anyone about it and admittedly there were no bruises or other evidence. On May 21, 1952, the only really serious incident occurred. The wife testified that at supper time, when her husband began accusing her of “different things”, she left the house and remained away for several hours.

The husband’s version is that when she returned he asked her where she had been, and she replied, “out with a man, what are you going to do about it?” The wife’s story is that he seized a knife, accused her of being out with a man and demanded to know who he was. In her complaint to the police she Sid not mention the knife. The husband admitted, but tried to minimize, the severity of the assault, saying it was just a slap with his open hand. Accorcding to the wife it was much more ⁵¹³ violent, and her claim as to the extent of the beating was corroborated by a physician who saw the bruise marks on her neck, jaw and arms.

Evidently quite aroused, the next morning the husband went to the house of his mother-in-law and declared, “Mom, I must kill Yolanda. She was out with a man”. When he returned to his home he found some policemen who had been summoned by the wife. They did not arrest him, but he says that he left the house at their suggestion and his wife’s insistence.

The husband asserts, and the wife denies, that a cooling-off period of sixty days was agreed to. At all events, he continued to support her and the children, wrote her and made other efforts at reconciliation which she rejected. On the sixtieth day, when he returned, she called the police. Although neither she nor the baby-sitter, who was present, says that the husband caused a disturbance or molested his wife in any way, he was arrested on her orders, taken from his home and lodged in the station house over night.

The wife announced that she would pack her husband’s clothes and throw the valise out, and she has resisted his every effort to re-establish the home, and also the advice of her own mother that she should live with her husband. She testified that she is afraid of him and does not want to live with him. Much of the record relates to what