Proudfoot v. Proudfoot

Parke, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The wife and appellant, Iva M. Proudfoot, first filed a bill of complaint for an absolute divorce from her husband and appellee, Floyd H. Proudfoot, on the ground of adultery. She also alleged cruelty. Code, art. 16, sec. 39, The answer of the husband denied the wife’s charges, and retaliated with a cross-bill in which he accused her of infidelity and cruelty.

The wife’s answer set up the falsity of these accusations, and, the parties being' at issue on both bills, they took testimony before the chancellor in open court. The husband dismissed his bill of complaint, and the chancellor dismissed the wife’s on the ground that she had failed to prove her case, and the present appeal of the wife is from this decree. There is no question of law involved in this cause, but the controversy is an issue of fact, with not only the usual burden of proof resting upon the wife as plaintiff, but also the further statutory requirement that her own testimony should be corroborated. Code, art. 35, sec. 4; Oertel v. Oertel, 145 Md. 177, 185 ; Barnett v. Barnett, 144 Md. 189, 190 .

The testimony has been carefully read -and weighed, and leaves no doubt that the decree dismissing the wife’s bill of complaint was made inevitable in the exercise of a sound, informed, and impartial judicial judgment. Between the wife and the husband there was crimination and recrimination. The wife’s attempt to establish specific acts of infidelity must fail for lack of any corroboration of her testimony. In fact, no one supported her testimony and the alleged co-respondents, as well as the husband, testified in denial of her accusations, which, as related, were inherently improbable.

Further ⁵⁸⁷ more, whatever the husband’s guilt, it was condoned by the wife’s enjoyment of the marital bed, with knowledge of her husband’s alleged adultery, until their separation in January, 1927, after a trivial dispute and fight over the