Sanborn v. Sanborn

Per Curiam. The scenario here is Madam Butterfly in reverse. The husband while working in Japan fell in love with a Japanese woman and wrote his wife that their marriage of twenty years was finished. The wife is now appealing from the provisions of the ¹⁷⁹ decree granting her a divorce that awarded $250 a month for alimony and $100 a month for the support of each of the three children.

The wife and children continue to live in the family home and she estimates the family’s monthly financial needs, including $132 a month house expenses for interest, principal and taxes, and $120 a month for her psychiatric treatments, at approximately $1,130. She worked as a government secretary for the first ten years of the marriage to support the family and enable her husband to finish his education. She now makes from $300 to $500 a year as a swimming instructor. The husband’s salary as an engineer is $17,250 and while he works in Hawaii, as he did at the time of the awards, he receives $18 a day seven days a week for expenses, giving him a total gross annual intake of $23,-820.

Under the decree appealed from, he must pay his family approximately 28% of this amount. As Judge Smith for the Court pointed out in Schuman v. Schuman, 252 Md. 13 , 15-16: “It is an unfortunate fact of life that two people cannot live apart as inexpensively as they can live together. The Innocent wife is