Snyder v. Snyder

Pattison, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellant, Charlotte E. Snyder, an infant under the age of twenty-one years, by her father and next friend Robert W. Carter, on the 26th day of August, 1929, filed her bill against the appellee, Henry Marvin Snyder, in the Circuit Court for Howard County, in which she alleged that on the 6th day of December, 1928, she was married to1 the defendant, with whom she resided in Howard County until the latter part of June, 1929, when they went to her father’s home in Carroll County, and there resided until on or about July 9th, of the same year, at which time the defendant “without any just cause or reason abandoned and deserted” ³⁹³ her. In addition thereto the bill alleged that the defendant, on divers days and times after their marriage and before the filing of the bill, committed the crime of adultery. The bill further alleged that the defendant was a. man of large means, the owner of a farm in Howard County, worth at least $20,000, together with personal property of the value of $7,000, from which he derived an annual net income of between $3,000 and $5,000 ; while she was destitute, without property or means with which to support herself and child, or to defray the costs and expenses of the suit.

It was also alleged in the bill that the defendant had sold and disposed of a large amount of his personal property, and was attempting to- dispose of his farm and the balance of his personal estate, so as to deprive the plaintiff of her interest and rights therein. The prayers of the bill are: (1) That she be divorced a viñado matrimonii from the- defendant. (2) That she be given the care and custody of their infant child. (3) That the defendant be required to pay to- her such sum or sums as the court may deem right and proper for the .support and maintenance of herself and child, both during the pendency of the suit and permanently thereafter, and for the expenses of this suit, including a reasonable- counsel fee to her solicitor.

(é) That pending the suit, or until the further order of the court, the defendant be restrained from disposing of any of his property. (5) For general relief. Upon the filing of the bill, a conditional order was passed for the payment to the plaintiff of fifteen dollars a week as alimony and a counsel fee of fifty dollars for her solicitor, and also- an order restraining the defendant from disposing of his property pending the suit, -or until the further order of the court. The defendant, on the 9th day -of September, answered the bill, denying the alleged abandonment and desertion of the plaintiff, and also- denying the charge of adultery.

On the ■same day he filed a cross-bill alleging that Charlotte E. Snyder, his wife, had abandoned and deserted him, and ³⁹⁴ asked that he be divorced a mensa et thorn from her, and that he be given the care and custody of their infant daughter. On September 19th, 1929, the wife, Charlotte E. Snyder, filed her answer to the cross-bill, in which she denied the allegation that she had abandoned and deserted her husband, Henry Marvin Snyder. The court, after hearing evidence upon the issues thus presented, passed its decree on the 18th day of October, 1929, by which both the bill and cross-bill were dismissed and the injunction dissolved, and by it the defendant to' the original bill was ordered to pay the costs of the proceedings and the counsel fee of fifty dollars, which he had been directed to pay to the plaintiff by the previous order of the court and which he had not paid. Erom this order the plaintiff appealed to this court.

Thereafter on the 16th day of November, the court, upon the petition of the plaintiff, ordered and directed the defendant to- pay the costs of the appeal so taken by the plaintiff, including counsel fee of fifty dollars for plaintiff’s solicitor for prosecuting the appeal, and further ordered that he pay to the plaintiff the sum of ten dollars per week from the 26th day of .August, 1929, to the determination of the case on appeal. The plaintiff appealed from that part of the order allowing fifty dollars as counsel fee. The defendant thereafter petitioned the court, alleging that he had been unable to pay the amounts owing 1» his creditors and “several of them levied on his personal property and tied up his affairs to such a degree that he was forced, on the twenty-first day of December, 1929, to convey all of his property to James Clark, in trnst for the benefit of his creditors.” .The Circuit Court for Howard County assumed jurisdiction of the administration of the trust and, as a result of the trust so created, he had no money available for the payment of the alimony, costs, and expenses, which he, by the order of November 16th, was directed to pay, and he asked the court to- reconsider its order of November 16th, and to pass, in lieu thereof, such order as it might deem ³⁹⁵ right and proper. Upon this petition the oonrt passed its order of January 13th, 1930, in lieu of its order of November 16th, 1929, excusing the defendant from the payment of the alimony he was directed to pay under the earlier order of November 16th, though the defendant by such order was to pay the counsel fee of fifty dollars, which he had been directed to pay under the rescinded order.

Thereupon the plaintiff appealed from the order of January 13th, 1930. Upon reaching this court, three appeals were docketed, Nos. 8, 9, and 30, one from each of the orders of October 18th and November 16th, 1929, and January 13th, 1930, although the order of November 16th, 1929, had been rescinded, and the order of January 13th, 1930, passed in lieu of it. Consequently no appeal should have been docketed from the order of November 16th, 1929, but only from the decree of October 18th, 1929, dismissing the bill and cross-bill, and dissolving the injunction, and the order of January 33th, 1930, disallowing alimony and directing the allowance of fifty dollars as counsel fee for the prosecution of the appeal. Assuming that the cases were docketed in the order in which the appeals were taken, the appeal in No. 9 from the order of November 16th, 1929, will be1 disregarded, and no costs will be allowed in such case.

We will first consider the appeal from the decree in No. 8, dismissing the hill and cross-bill, and dissolving the injunction. The plaintiff in the original bill, Charlotte E. Snyder, was at the time of her marriage, on the 6th day of December, 1928, about seventeen years of age. After her marriage to the defendant, Henry Marvin Snyder, aged twenty-two, she went to the home of her father and mother at or near Sykes-ville, in Carrol] County, for about two months, and from there she went to the farm of her husband in Howard County, where sbe resided with him until June 19th, 1929, at which time the baby bom to them was taken sick, and she with her husband returned to the home of her father and mother, and there lived together until the 9th day of July of the same ³⁹⁶ year, -when he left, and since that time they have not lived together as man and wife. After deserting his wife at the home of her parents in July, we find the defendant in the same month a frequent visitor at the home of the Wards, a few miles from Sykesville, in which family there were several single daughters, and staying with them was a young woman, Miss K., to whom we will hereafter refer as the “co-respondent.” In the month of August following his separation from his wife, the defendant attended a dance at Randallstown, in Carroll County, in an intoxicated condition, and there danced with the corespondent.

On this occasion he was seen talking with her for ten or fifteen minutes near the dance hall, when it was arranged that she, on the next day, Sunday, should accompany him in his automobile to Harrisburg, Pa. On the following morning, at 11 o’clock, they left the Ward home for' Harrisburg. They took lunch at that place, and thereafter drove ten or fifteen miles beyond Harrisburg before starting home. They reached the Ward home, as they testified, about nine o’clock in the evening.

Millard Carter, a brother of the plaintiff and also a frequent visitor at the Ward home, where he had many times seen the defendant during said months of July and August upon the latter’s visits to these young women, testified that, between ten and eleven o’clock in the night of that day, the defendant and the co-respondent were seen by him, in the defendant’s car, parked on a bridge in the road or lane leading from the public road to the Ward home, about thirty or forty feet from the state road and about eighty feet or more from the Ward house, facing the latter place. Millard Carter at that time was returning to the Ward home from a ride with one of the Ward girls. When he reached the car of the defendant his way was blocked, as the bridge was a one way bridge. He recognized the car to be the car of the defendant, and called to him saying, “What are you doing parked here ?” and the defendant backed his car off the bridge out again in the state road, and went towards Elders-burg, which is between the Ward entrance and Sykesville.

Those in the automobile were recognized by Carter as being ³⁹⁷ the defendant and the co-respondent. It is not clear from the evidence whether the defendant with the co-respondent went ttp to the Ward house, reaching there at nine o’clock, and thereafter went out in the car again, or whether, upon reaching the bridge in the lane or road, a short distance from the house, at nine o’clock, they remained upon the bridge until ten or eleven o’clock, when seen there by Carter. Carter further testified that, after going to the Ward house, where he remained for about a half hour, he returned to the state road and proceeded on his way home towards Sykesville. While on this road, not far from the Ward home, he saw an Oldsmobile roadster parked about one hundred feet in the woods.

He could not see who was in the car, but the car was like the one owned and driven by the defendant, and like the one in which he had seen Snyder and the co-respondent only a short time before on the bridge, and he knew1 of no other car like it in or around Sykesville. The defendant, as well as the co-respondent, admitted that they were in the car on the bridge where Carter said he saw them, and that they backed their car out upon the road, but,, as stated by them, upon reaching the state road they went, towards Westminster and not towards Eldersburg, and while-both the defendant and the co-respondent were familiar with that section of the county, their statements as to the distance-they went and the towns through which they passed, if any,, and the time at which they reached the Ward home upon their return from that trip, were very indefinite. They said they remained out upon the road in order that Carter could go to the house and return to the road without seeing them, as they did not wish him to know that the co-respondent was the one in the car with the defendant, the husband of