Mason v. Mason

P®R Curiam. A divorced mother, since remarried, appeals from a decree awarding custody of the two minor children of the parties— a daughter born in 1954 and a son in 1958—to their father. When the couple separated in September, 1960, because of the wife’s relations with her music teacher, a married man, the wife went to live with her paramour, taking the children with her. The husband was later granted a divorce a vinculo on ground of adultery, admitted by the wife.

Temporary custody of the children was awarded the wife, pending a welfare department investigation. Thereafter, the wife married the paramour, then also divorced. At the divorce trial and at the subsequent custody hearing considerable testimony as to the wife’s fitness as a mother was received. Her mother and a neighbor stated she had been a good mother and the children were happy and well adjusted.

On the other hand, there was testimony that the paramour had often visited the wife before the separation, and that she had embraced him in an automobile on the street in the daughter’s presence; that in the six months after the separation, the daughter had been absent from school fourteen times, often without an excuse, and that the mother failed several times to attend a conference about it; that the mother intended to continue to work part time while her mother cared for- the children. The welfare investigator, while favorably impressed by the mother and the condition of the children when she called, noted a school report as