Case ID: ky_70/html/0306-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      OHIEE JUSTICE ROBERTSON", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Case 58 — PETITION FOR DIVORCE
    October 15.
    Shuck v. Shuck.
    APPEAL PROM LOUISVILLE CHANCERY COURT.
    1. Confirmed habit of drunkenness of the husband for not less than one year, with a wasting oí his estate and without any suitable provision lor the maintenance of his wife and children, authorize a divorce to the wife.
    2. What may constitute the husband’s only estate. — -His mental and physical faculties may constitute the husband’s only estate, a wasting of which is one of the ingredients of the grounds for divorce in favor of the wife.
    3. What constitutes a provision for the maintenance of the wife and children.- — -The provision for the maintenance of the wife and children contemplated by the statute is an assured maintenance by the husband’s own means, and not dependence on a precarious and contingent expectancy from his or her father or kindred.
    Jambs Harlan, . . j ^ TT . „ >.......Jb or Appellant, Harlan & Newman, J
    CITED
    Revised Statutes, sec. 1, subsec. 9, art. 3, chap. 47, 2 Stanton, 17.
    Field & Twyman, For Appellee,
    cited
    Civil Code, section 372.
   OHIEE JUSTICE ROBERTSON

delivered the opinion oe the court.

Mollie Shuck, represented as an elegant and accomplished lady, sued her husband, Sol. Shuck, for a divorce a vinculo, on the statutory ground of “confirmed habit of drunkenness on the part of the husband of not less than one year’s duration, accompanied with a wasting of his estate, and without any suitable provision for the maintenance of his wife and children.” He resisted the divorce, and after full preparation the chancellor dismissed her petition. This appeal seeks a reversal of that decree.

The testimony preponderates decidedly in support of the . charge of a confirmed habit of drunkenness for more than a year.

In like manner, it sufficiently proves a wasting of his only estate, which consisted of his mental and physical faculties, and of the want also of a suitable provision for such a woman and their only child, a son about seven years old. The provision contemplated by the statute is an assured maintenance by the husband’s own means, and not, as in this case, dependence on a precarious and contingent expectancy from his generous father, or her own father or kindred.'

No such hope of extraneous and uncertain support can be adjudged a suitable provision by the husband, as prescribed by the statute.

Wherefore the judgment is reversed, and the cause remanded with instructions to decree the relief sought by the appellant.