Ridgely v. Ridgely

McSherry, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. In October, 1881, Frank I. Ridgely married the appellee, Charlotte, and they resided in Maryland continuously until October, 1892, when the said Charlotte left the State without the consent of her husband and went to South Dakota, where, in January following, she instituted proceedings against her husband for divorce, which culminated in a decree of divorce avinado on April 13th, 1893. A few days thereafter she returned to Baltimore, and in May following she married the appellee, Hyatt. It is alleged in the bill of complaint filed by Frank I. Ridgely against his former wife Charlotte and her present hus ³⁰⁰ band Hyatt, that she went to.

South Dakota for the purpose of procuring a divorce; that he was ignorant of her whereabouts during her absence; that she was without means of her own to defray her expenses, and that her conduct in this matter resulted from the influence of Hyatt, who fraudulently and illegally aided her in attempting to destroy the plaintiff’s marital rights. The bill charges that the divorce procured in South Dakota is void, and prays that the “so-called ceremony of marriage between Edward Hyatt and the said Charlotte Ridgely may be declared null and void.” .To this bill a demurrer was filed, and upon a hearing thereof Circuit Court No. 2 (Wigices, J.) sustained the demurrer and dismissed the bill. Prom that decree this appeal was taken. The jurisdiction of a Court of equity to pass a decree of the character prayed for, upon the application of a person not a party to the marriage alleged to be null and void, is directly presented.

Treating, for the purposes of this discussion, the concessions of the demurrer as admitting the invalidity of the South Dakota divorce, how can a Maryland Court of equity, at the instance of ¡Mr. Ridgely, annul a subsequent marriage of his wife to another person, upon a bill filed exclusively for that purpose and asking no other relief? That is the distinct question which this record brings before us for decision. If such a power be possessed by a Court of equity it must have been acquired either as a part of its original inherent jurisdiction or by statute. But upon tracing the history of the English Court of Chancery prior to the American Revolution, no such power will be found to have been asserted or exercised by that tribunal.

In point of fact, as early as the reign of Edward the Confessor the clergy assumed to decide all matters relating to marriage; but somewhat later the Ecclesiastical Courts took jurisdiction, both in respect of annulments for canonical disabilities and dissolutions by limited divorces for super ³⁰¹ advenient causes; and, acting on the ground that marriage was a sacrament, held it to be indissoluble. But, inasmuch as adultery was a flagrant breach of the marriage vow, it was soon found necessary to devise some means to punish the offending party, and to relieve the innocent one from the ties of a contract so incontestably violated. Accordingly the Ecclesiastical Courts, but not the Court of Chancery, began to decree separations on the ground of adultery- — such separations giving to the parties all the rights of celibacy, except that of contracting a new marriage. Gradually the grounds of such separations were extended, and cruelty and some other causes were allowed as just and proper reasons to support them.

Thus much having been conceded, men began to look forward to these separations with a view to. the formation of other and more desirable ties. Apparently to meet this growing desire, but at all events contemporaneously with it, the ecclesiastical law expanded beyond their original limits the degrees of consanguinity and affinity within which it was declared unlawful to contract marriage. “And not only was it held that relations of the blood to the sixth or seventh degree were incapable of contracting matrimony, but that if either party to the marriage had been pre-contracted to another, the marriage was voidable; and eventually it was declared that if it happened to any man to have carnal connection with a woman, the same relations in regard to affinity were thereby created between them as if an actual marriage had taken place. Upon these grounds of pre-contract, affinity and carnal knowledge, the ecclesiastical law, still upholding the doctrine of the sacramental indissolubility of marriage, * * * and declaring such marriages to have been null and void ab initio, separated the parties ‘pro salute animar um,’lent they should endanger their souls by living in a state of known sin/’' 2 Broom & Hadley’s Com., side page 394. Thus matters stood until the Reformation, ³⁰² when, the view of the reformers, including.

Cranmer, was that a more extended system of divorce should bé allowed; and that a second marriage should be permitted after a divorce for adultery. A digest of ecclesiastical law compiled under 3 & 4 Edivard VI., ch. 11, having failed to receive the imprimatur of the law, by reason of the death of the king, there was no judicial authority in the realm which had jurisdiction to make such a decree as would enable a man or woman to marry again, and recourse was then had to the supreme power of the State — the king, lords and commons in Parliament assembled — to legislate upon the particular circumstances of each case. 2 Broom & Hadley’s Com., side page 395. These applications to Parliament became precedents, and after 1701 became more numerous. No steps, however, were taken to reduce the practice there to any form till 1798, when Lord Loughborough’s Orders were adopted.

These, with some modifications, continued to control the method of procedure until in 1857, the Court of Divorce and Matrimonial Causes was created by 20 & 21 Vic., ch. 95. It will thus be seen from this rapid and imperfect sketch that from the very earliest times the jurisdiction to annul a marriage in England, when void, or avoidable on account of pre-existing impediments, or to dissolve it for supervenient causes, was vested in other tribunals than the Court of Chancery (Shelford, Mar. & Div., side page 459); and consequently when Maryland separated from the mother country the Maryland Court of Chancery did not acquire from the English Chancery any power over such cases— though in this State the Courts of equity, independently of any statute, but in virtue of their general jurisdiction to vacate contracts procured by fraud, have exercised the power to annul a contract of marriage when the marriage was induced or procured by fraud or coercion. But of this later on. The sole jurisdiction in divorce and matrimonial causes being at the time of the Revolution vested ³⁰³ in the ecclesiastical Courts and in Parliament, and no ecclesiastical Court having been established in Maryland, the legislature in 1777 passed an Act, ch. 12 by the loth sec. of which it was provided: “ That the General Court may inquire into, hear and determine, either on indictment,. or petition of either of the parties, the validity of any marriage, and may declare any marriage contrary to the table in this Act, or any second marriage, the first subsisting, null and void. * * * *” The legislature in thus providing for judgments of nullity in certain instances, including both canonical and civil disabilities, did not confer jurisdiction upon the Court of chancery in the premises, but upon the General Court; and when the latter Court was abolished, this power was transferred, said Chancellor Bland in Fornshill vs. Murray, 1 Bl., 483 , to the county Courts.

Under the Constitution of 1851, Art. 4, sec. 11, the Superior Court of Baltimore City was given equity jurisdiction in that city. When, therefore, the Code of 1860 was adopted and the Act of 1777. ch. 12, sec. 15, was codified therein, it gave to the Courts exercising equity jurisdiction at that time — viz., the Superior Court of Baltimore City and the Circuit Courts for the counties — the authority to decree the nullity of marriages for the causes set forth in the old Act of 1777. The Constitutiou of 1867 deprived the Superior Court of all equity jurisdiction and conferred that jurisdiction exclusively upon the Circuit Court of Baltimore City. The organic and the statute law stood thus in February, 1881, when the case of Le Brun vs. Le Brun, 55 Md., 496 , was decided by this Court.

In that case it was said: “ Suits for nullity of marriage have been very rare in this State, but the power of a Court of equity to declare a marriage null and void, when a proper case is' made out, cannot be questioned. The authority of the Court, however, to act in such cases, is not derived from the powers 'conferred by the divorce laws. * •• * If the marriage be procured by abduction, ³⁰⁴ terror, fraud or duress, the Court, in declaring it a nullity, acts in virtue of its general jurisdiction in matters of fraud affecting contracts, and by the marriage Act (Code, Art. 60, sec. 8) [the Act of 1777, ch. 12, sec. 15] express authority is given to the Courts to inquire into, hear and determine the validity of any marriage, and may declare any marriage within the prohibited degrees of kindred or. affinity, ‘or any second marriage, the first subsisting,’ null and void. These are the two sources of jurisdiction.” This Court was strictly right when, in the case just cited, it referred to the Act of 1777 asi codified in sec. 8 of Art. 60 of the Code of 1860, as one of the two sources of an equity Court’s