Taylor v. Taylor

Schmucker, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is an appeal from a decree of the Circuit Court for Cecil County requiring the appellant to pay to the appellee, who is his wife, an annual sum as alimony during the term of her natural life. The appellee has been living apart from her husband since a date anterior to the institution of the present suit, but she neither asked for nor obtained a divorce from him a vinculo or a mensa ct thoro. The object of her suit was simply to secure the payment to her of alimony and the decree awarding it left the marital relation and status of the parties unimpaired in all other respects.

The power of a Court of chancery in Maryland to entertain an application by a wife against her husband, on sufficient grounds, for alimony is undoubted. As recently as in the case of Stewart v. Stewart, 105 Md. 297 , we said, speaking through Judge Pearce, “From a period before the Revolution however the Court of Chancery in this State had full jurisdiction in cases of alimony though no divorce had been de ¹³¹ creed or was asked for, and though the case made by the bill and proof would not according to the Ecclesiastical Courts in England entitle her to a divorce a mensa et thoro.” The question before us in this case is simply whether the record shows the existence of proper grounds for the relief for which plaintiff asks. It appears from the record that the parties were married on June 25th, 1902, and lived together at Perryville in Cecil County until November 4th, 1903, when the wife returned to the house of her parents where she has ever since then resided. The bill of complaint does not charge the husband with infidelity or with physical violence toward his wife, or the inflic tion upon her of bodily injury or hardship, or with any coercion, or restraint of her personal liberty, nor even with a failure to support her so long as she lived with him.

The substantial charge upon which the suit is founded is that he abandoned her at the time of their separation on November 4th, 1903, and has since then failed to support her. It is not averred in the bill that he himself left the marital domicile and refused to return to it. The abandonment is alleged to have been accomplished through deceit on his part by inducing her to visit her parents and then refusing to permit her to return to his home. It is also alleged that the abandonment thus accomplished was the culmination of a long cherished desire and purpose on his part to get rid of her, made more and more apparent by an increasing indifference to her and by speech and conduct at times unmanly, harsh and cruel by which her life was rendered miserable, The answer of the husband while admitting the occurrence of many of the facts mentioned in the bill, categorically denied the existence of any desire or intention on his part to get rid of his wife or the practice by him of any deceit to induce her to leave his home or a refusal to receive her back after she had left.

On the contrary it averred that after she voluntarily left his home and returned to her father he had written her an affectionate letter, entreating her to return to him and asking her forgiveness if he had been hasty and offering to forgive her for her ¹³² past shortcomings, to which she made no reply. The answer further protested that he had been a kind and faithful husband in all respects and asserted that his wife had been overbearing, imperious and obstinate in the extreme in her demeanor toward him. Both of the parties to the suit went upon the-stand and testified át length giving versions of their marital experiences, which failed to agree in details and were" especially conflicting in that each of the participants attempted to throw upon the other the blame for many heated and sometimes bitter quarrels over matters of slight importance, all of which might have been avoided by the exercise of that mutual forbearance which the state of matrimony demands of those who enter its portals. This testimony was supplemented by that of friends and neighbors of the litigants which fails to entirely corroborate the accounts given by either litigant of the material facts of the case.

The whole evidence in the case fills almost four hundred pages of the record. It presents a lamentable disclosure of the petty bickerings of a young married couple which should never have found its way into a Court of Justice. We have patiently gone through this mass of testimony, but we will not encumber our opinion with more than a statement of our conclusions from it with a reference to some of the facts, material to the issue, which we regard as established by it. • • It appears from the evidence that the parties to the suit are educated and intelligent persons who might well be expected to appreciate the obligations and duties of married life. The appellant was at the time .of the marriage and still is a regular practicing physician in the enjoyment of a practice adequate -'for the maintainance of his family in modest comfort.

The appellee was a school teacher prior to her marriage. Their married life seems, in the main, to have been an agreeable One and to have produced the impression upon some at least of their neighbors who -saw-them often that they were a congenial couple. The husband provided -the family maintainance in accordance with-his means and the wife displayed in'duStry and fidelity in the- conduct of the domestic establish- ¹³³ . ment. Unfortunately he was rather petulant in disposition and unstable in purpose and she was high tempered and easily provoked.

The possession by them of such personal traits is sufficient to account for most of the acute but transient quarrels which marred their domestic peace. It is but fair to the wife to say that the record shows that the husband, at times manifested an indifference to her and at other times chafed under the' burden of providing for the family and made; known his discontent, to her humiliation and chagrin. He must, however, have treated her well as a rule for she herself said of him in her direct testimony: “Generally when he had these tantrums, when he would get over them he was as nice as anything could be,” and she repeated the statement in her cross examination. It further appears from the record that in April, 1903, after the occurrence of most of the petty quarrels between the husband and wife mentioned in the evb dence, there was a family conference over their affairs at which his mother and his wife’s parents were present that resulted in mutual apologies and a complete reconciliation between them.

These occasional breaks in the harmony of the marital life of the parties to this suit, even thongh they be chargeable to the husband’s conduct, do not in our opinion exhibit such cruelty or ill treatment by him of his wife as to justify their living apart from each other. A fortiori do those occurrences afford no sufficient ground for that judicial recognition of the propriety of such living apart, which would be implied by granting her a decree against him for permanent alimony. Marriage is more than a mere civil contract for the establishment and maintainance by the parties to it of certain relations to each other. It involves, except in so far as it has been modified by statute, an intimate personal union of those participating in it, of a character unknown to any other human relation, and it creates a civil status the maintainance of which iii its full integrity is vital to the moral welfare of society.

Many States, of which Maryland is one, have conferred'upon their Courts of equity the power of decreeing an absolute or partial dissolution of marriages but that power is permitted to ¹³⁴ be exercised only for grave causes and in specified methods. The living together of the husband and wife is also so obviously normal, and essential to the maintainance of the marital relation and status, that the law will not encourage their separation by granting alimony to a wife when living apart from her husband except when he has abandoned or deserted her or has been guilty of such cruel or vicious conduct that she cannot with safety or decency consort with him. To justify the living apart of a married couple the causes must be grave and weighty and such as render the performance of marital duties impossible. Hewitt v. Hewitt, 1 Bl. 101 ; Helms v. Franciscas, 2 Bl. 568 ; Jamison v. Jamison, 4 Md. Chy. 294; Schindel v. Schindel, 12 Md. 315 ; Childs v. Childs, 49 Md. 509 ; Hawkins v. Hawkins, 65 Md. 104 .

We do not think the charge of abandonment, made by the bill against the husband, is supported by the evidence. It is settled that, if he forced her to abandon him by his vicious conduct or induced her to do so by fraud and deceit and refused to permit her to return, his conduct would have amounted in law to an abandonment of her by him. Harding v. Harding, 22 Md. 337 ; Levering v. Levering, 16 Md. 213 . He is charged in the bill with having deceitfully and with the purpose of getting rid of her induced her to pay a-visit to her father’s residence on November 4th, 1903, and then refused to permit her to return home.

The testimony, as to the circumstances of her leaving her husband’s domicile on that occasion, is full and there is a substantial agreement between the accounts given by the different