Givner v. Givner

Hammond, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This appeal is from a decree of the Circuit Court of Baltimore City granting a divorce a mensa et thoro to Nettie F. Givner, the appellee, from her husband, Charles I. Givner, the appellant, and awarding her fifteen dollars a week as permanent alimony with a fee of one hundred dollars to her solicitor. The couple, who were middle aged, were married on February 4, 1951, after having known each other but a short time, and lived together for approximately nine months. He moved into the home of the wife, a two-story house, where they occupied the first floor, the upper floor being rented to a tenant who passed through ³³⁵ the living room on the first floor to go to her apartment.

The wife’s father had a bedroom on the second floor also, although he used the bathroom and living room on the first floor. The husband left the wife and the home on three occasions before the final separation, in June, in August, and in September. On each occasion, the argument which precipitated his leaving was over a trivial matter, such as cold fish, the political leanings of his wife, and the fact that she had telephoned for him to come home from a tavern where he was playing cards. The husband had been married before and had been divorced by his wife on the ground of cruelty.

Preceding each separation in this case the husband, who seemingly drank and gambled with some regularity and when he pleased, would become quarrelsome, yell at his wife, bang on the table loud enough for the neighbors to hear, and call her a “truck horse” or a “Mack truck”. On each occasion the husband effected a reconciliation and for two or three weeks thereafter, the couple apparently lived a relatively quiet married life. The final separation happened on the night of November 3rd. The husband says he came home feeling sick and that the wife and the father were listening to television in the living room.

He went into the kitchen and laid down on three chairs. Feeling worse, he went outside and laid down in his car, and then, on the advice of a neighbor, purchased some brandy, which he took home, had a drink with his father-in-law, and went to bed. Later that evening, he asked his wife to have marital relations with him, and she refused on the ground that she was sick. Apparently she had been sick for almost a week.

After her refusal, he said: “You have made me the happiest man in the world”, packed his things and left the house. She interpreted this remark as meaning that he had been afforded grounds which would justify him to leave and perhaps to divorce her. After some two weeks of separation, Givner inserted an advertisement in the newspaper, stating that he would ³³⁶ not be responsible for his wife’s debts. About a month and a half after he left, he filed suit for divorce on the ground of constructive desertion.

He said that both the advertisement and the suit were for the purpose of “waking her up”, so that she would realize the seriousness of the situation, and would return to him. Soon after the final separation, he had rented an apartment at the Marlborough Apartments, apparently on a temporary basis, and he telephoned her to ask that she come there to live with him. He is still living there. His testimony is that he desired a reconciliation, and that he was perfectly willing to live with his wife anywhere, except in her home with her father there.

He complained of the lack of privacy — the father had to pass within a few feet of their bed as he went to and from the bath— and that he could never be alone with his wife. His efforts at reconciliation jwtere sail on "the telephone. One of the conversations apparently lasted as long as six hours and another two and a half hours. Why the wife endured these Marathon conversations is not clear and what the participants could have found to talk about for that length of time is likewise left to conjecture.

The wife says that she did not want to hurt his feelings but, whatever the reason, only once did she avail herself of the happy opportunity, afforded by the telephone, as with television and radio, of disconnecting the electric current to avoid further listening. Except on one occasion, her description of the telephone conversations is that he kept saying they could not live together, and she agreed with him. She said that every time he called, she was “a nervous wreck for hours