| Volume 200, Volume 2, Page 342 View pdf image (33K) |
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342 HIGH COURT OF CHANCERY. Though its jurisdiction has been denied by demurrer, or otherwise, the court is not, on that account, at liberty to withhold from the wife the means of living in the interval, or perhaps of prosecuting her suit. But if the wife hat under her own control, the means of carrying on the suit and maintaining herself pending the litigation, the reason of the rule fails, and the rule itself fails also. Where the application for temporary alimony and the means to prosecute the suit, was delayed until the cause was nearly ready for final bearing, upon the merits, and it being proved that the wife had received since the com- mencement of the suit, the sum of $300, in derogation of the marital rights of the husband, which he consented she should retain and apply to the ex- penses of the suit, the court refused to order the husband to pay any thing further to enable his wife to prosecute her suit, but passed an order granting her alimony, pendents lite. To support the charge of "cruelty of treatment" under the 3d section of the act of 1841, ch. 262) it is not sufficient to show acts of mere petulance and rudeness, and rallies of passion, but there must be a series of acts of per- sonal violence, or danger of life, limb, or health, to justify the court in separating the parties. The rule prescribed by the common law, and the law of England, is applicable to this statute, and the term "cruelty" used in it, must have the same in- terpretation as that given by the ecclesiastical courts. The marriage relation is not to be dissolved upon slight grounds, nor will par- ties be relieved from the duties and responsibilities it imposes, merely be- cause there may be some want of congeniality in their tempers and disposi- tions. Public policy and morality alike condemn these partial dissolutions of the matrimonial union, and to justify the court in decreeing them, reasons of a grave and weighty nature should exist; and in this state, the causes which should lead to such separation, ought to be the more urgent and imperative, from the fact, that our statute, unlike that of other states, compels the court, if it interferes at all, to separate the parties permanently, and not for a limit- ed time [The petition for a divorce in this case, was filed in the equity side of Baltimore County Court, on the 1st of February, 1850, and states that the petitioner was married: to the defend- ant on the 29th of November, 1849, and lived with him as his wife until the 28th of January, 1850, sedulously fulfilling her duties as such. That within a fortnight after their intermar- riage, her husband began ill treatment of her, by the most abu- sive language, and has continued such treatment, indulging in the most intemperate, unprovoked and terrifying outbreaks of passion, that recently, when the petitioner has been sick and |
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Reports of Cases in the High Court of Chancery of Maryland 1846-1854
| Volume 200, Volume 2, Page 342 View pdf image (33K) |
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