Case ID: wright_1/html/0289-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "BY THE COURT.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

PATIENCE MANSFIELD v. ROSWELL MANSFIELD.
    Divorce — certainty—agreement—collusion—condonation—adversary proceedings.
    A charge of adultery with a certain woman, is too uncertain to admit proof under it.
    The court will not decree a divorce when there has heen an agreement to separate, or there is collusion, or a condonation of the complaint has taken piace; the proceeding in divorce is strictly adversary.
    
    
      Divorce. Cause, wilful absence and adultery with a certain woman. It appeared in evidence that these parties removed into Butler county in 1819, and there lived together until 1828. He left her eight or nine years since and went to Cincinnati, saying, he' could not live with that woman, and would not. She soon followed him to Cincinnati, but shortly returned, and said, her husband was to pay her one hundred and seventy dollars, and Esq. Chittenden one hundred more, and she was to apply for and obtain a divorce. The proof showed her character good, though she has been occasionally deranged in mind.
   BY THE COURT.

This bill must be dismissed. We do not sit here to enforce contracts of separation between husband and wife,in 285] the *shape of a decree for a divorce. The whole proceeding for divorce is strictly adversary; if it appear there is collusion between the parties, or an agreement, or that a divorce is prayed for, for a cause which has been forgiven by the parties, a divorce is never decreed. The proof of adultery cannot be received under this petition.