Short v. Short

Parke, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. William H. Short, appellant, and Haomi Short, his wife, appellee, were married on January 30th, 1901, and they lived together for twenty-three years, when the wife left her husband for a period of two months, and then returned to him at their home in Cumberland, where she remained until January, 1926, when she left. In the bill of complaint the wife alleged that the cruel treatment of her husband had impaired her health and rendered it impossible for her to continue to live with him. The relief she sought was alimony and a right to live separate and apart from her husband.' The husband’s answer denied the cruelty and asserted that she had abandoned him without cause.

The testimony was taken before the chancellor, who passed a decree adjudging the wife entitled to live separate and apart ⁴⁴⁶ from her husband, and awarding to the wife permanent alimony. The testimony of the wife was not corroborated in any material particular, and its own inherent improbability and legal insufficiency scarcely needed the denial of the husband and of the other witnesses who testified. The evidence did not establish that the husband’s conduct constituted cruelty of treatment, which must exist in its technical sense. Legal cruelty must be such conduct on the part of the husband as will endanger the life, person, or health of the wife, or will cause reasonable apprehension of bodily suffering.

It should be of such a nature as to render cohabitation physically unsafe to a degree justifying a refusal to continue it. Marital neglect, indifference, a failure to provide as freely as the wife may desire in dress or in conveniences, sallies of passion, harshness, rudeness, and the use of profane and abusive language towards her, are not sufficient, if not in manner and degree endangering her personal security or health. Childs v. Childs, 49 Md. 514 ; Hawkins v. Hawkins, 65 Md. 108 ; Bounds v. Bounds, 135 Md. 220 . The evidence is too slight to afford any ground for the conclusion that physical violence was either used or threatened.

The wife’s professed fear of her husband is wholly irrational. Hor is there any credible proof that the wife’s mental or physical condition was attributable to the misconduct of the husband. It is true that the wife testified that she was afraid of her husband, but her actions did not indicate it, and her own and the other testimony on this point does not disclose any rational basis for the existence of this alleged fear. Hor is there any credible proof that the wife’s mental or physical condition is attributable to the miscon* duct of the husband.

On the contrary, the doctors assign her highly nervous and irritable state, the dislike of her husband, and the clearly ungrounded fear of him, to an imaginative condition induced by a premature functional change, resulting from a surgical operation. ⁴⁴⁷ The wife, however, insists that the alimony awarded should stand because of her contention that her mental and physical condition were such that she could not resume marital connection and that she could not be happy unless living apart from her husband. The difficulty with this view is that mere unhappiness of