Tumminello v. Tumminello

Hammond, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The wife complains in this appeal that the alimony granted her in a suit for separate maintenance, and the allowance to her counsel, are inadequate. The husband did not appeal from the decree, so that the right to alimony is not before us — merely the amount. The husband is a professional man, a physician, whose income subject to tax, after deduction of business expenses, is approximately $11,000 a year.

The couple separated in 1939 and have been apart since. There were three daughters who remained with the wife in the home of the couple, owned as tenants by the entireties. The wife has lived in the home continuously. The eldest daughter has married and has her own hqme, and the middle child, who is eighteen, 'has graduated from secretarial school and now pays her own way, although she continues to live with her mother, as does the youngest girl, who is fourteen years old and still in school.

Since the separation, the husband has sent the wife $35.00 a week and paid the taxes and ground rent on the home and the bill for electricity and gas, the latter being used for heating as well as cooking purposes. He has also paid directly, or reimbursed the wife for, the cost of the education and clothing of the girls. The Chancellor found that the husband had deserted the wife. He gave custody of the two younger girls unto the mother, charging the cost of their education and clothing to their father, to be paid direct.

He awarded the wife $150.00 a month permanent alimony, taking into account the fact that the expenses were being paid on the house in which she was living, as she was entitled to do, rent free. Well aware that in suit for separate maintenance or permanent alimony, the court may award ⁶¹¹ only a money decree, —Hull v. Hull, 201 Md. 225 ,—he did not order the payment of the expenses but indicated that as long as they continued to be paid, he felt the amount awarded would be sufficient. The fee given the solicitor for the wife for the case in the lower court was $350.00. The parties come down the stretch to the appellate wire not far apart.

The wife asks that she be awarded a periodic allowance in the total of all the items which the husband has been paying in the past. The amount paid out by him in 1953 was $3,831.51. This included the education and clothing of the older girl, now self-supporting, in the amount of some $800.00. The wife asks that he be ordered to pay her approximately $3,950.00 a year.

The husband urges that we affirm the decree below, although in the past he has suggested, on several occasions, that if the wife would divorce him, he