Opinion ID: 2430234
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Heading Rank: 1

Heading: historical overview of intentional interference with the marital relation

Text: An overview of the origin of this cause of action provides the necessary framework for our analysis. In Teutonic tribes adultery was a grave offense because it threatened pure blood lines. Legitimacy of children was a premium because offspring could not inherit from their mother since she was not of the same rank as their father. Adultery thus was forbidden due to prejudice, not for moral reasons. The penalty most Teutonic tribes imposed on the wife's lover was payment of compensation to the husband, thus providing him means to purchase a new spouse. Buying a new wife insured the legitimacy of the husband's offspring. Lippman, The Breakdown of Consortium, 30 Colum.L.Rev. 651, 655 (1930). The Anglo-Saxons based actions against third parties involving tortious interference with the marriage relation in trespass. The wife was considered a servant to her husband, his chattel. Thus since the wife was a superior servant, an action was available to include the loss of her services by enticement. Lippman, supra at 653. Anglo-Saxon common law actions were seen as compensatory in nature. The husband's entitlement to consortium included a bundle of legal rights to his wife's services, society, and sexual intercourse. Later in this century courts added to consortium rights a fourth element of conjugal affection. See Lippman, supra at 652-53; Prosser and Keeton, THE LAW OF TORTS, § 124 at 916 (5th ed. 1984). Early English common law established two causes of action which for some purposes can simply be regarded as different means by which the marriage relationship is subjected to interference. Prosser and Keeton, supra at 917-919. The first, enticement (also called abduction), involved assisting or inducing a wife to leave her husband by means of fraud, violence, or persuasion. The injury was considered to be the loss of the wife's services or consortium. Enticement (or abduction) has evolved into what is commonly known today as the tort of alienation of affections. The second tort remedy available to an injured spouse at early common law was seduction, which today is commonly known as the tort of criminal conversation. Unlike enticement/abduction, seduction required an adulterous relationship between the plaintiff's spouse and the defendant; no physical separation of the husband and wife was necessary. The purpose underlying an action for seduction was to vindicate the husband's property rights in his wife's person and to punish the defendant for defiling the plaintiff's marriage and family honor, and for placing the legitimacy of children in doubt. Comment, Stealing Love In Tennessee: The Thief Goes Free, 56 Tenn.L.Rev. 629 (1989); Prosser and Keeton, supra. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries most states, including Kentucky, acted to equalize the legal status of wives with passage of Married Women's Property Acts. These acts granted wives the right to own property and to sue in their own names to recover damages for their own personal injuries. Comment, Alienation of Affections: Flourishing Anachronism, 13 Wake Forest L.Rev. 585, 588 (1977). The courts, with wives acquiring such rights, were then confronted with the issue as to the continued viability of the tortious causes of actions; alienation of affections and criminal conversation. Because the derivation of these torts was based on the legal inferiority of women, courts could reasonably determine to either deprive their use to a husband or to extend their use to a wife. Feinsinger, Legislative Attack on Heart Balm,  33 Mich.L.Rev. 979, 990 (1935); Lippman, supra at 662; Kavanagh, Alienation of Affections and Criminal Conversation: Unholy Marriage in Need of Annulment, 23 Ariz. L.Rev. 323, 329 (1981). Following the majority of courts, the Commonwealth granted these rights of action to the wife. Dietzman v. Mullin, 108 Ky. 610, 57 S.W. 247 (1900). Extension of these rights of action to the wife necessitated adjusting their rationale. Historically these actions were viewed as property-based torts that compensated the husband for loss of services and protected pure blood lines. But this century, as the result of women acquiring legal status in the courts, alienation of affections and criminal conversation came to be seen as means to preserve marital harmony by deterring wrongful interference. Feinsinger, supra at 1008. A legal fiction was thus created. As Justice Holmes stated: a common phenomenon . . . familiar to the students of history, is this. The customs, beliefs or needs of a primitive time establish a rule or a formula. In the course of centuries the custom, belief, or necessity, disappears, but the rule remains. The reason which gave rise to the rule has been forgotten, and ingenious minds set themselves to inquire how it is to be accounted for. Some ground of policy is thought of, which seems to explain it and to reconcile it with the present state of things and then the rule adapts itself to the new reasons which have been found for it, and enters a new career. The old form receives a new content and in time even the form modifies itself to fit the meaning which it has received. Lippman, supra at 672, citing THE COMMON LAW § 5. The courts made no structural adjustments in actions related to intentional interference with the marriage when women obtained rights through the Married Women's Property Acts; thus the legal fiction of a spouse owning property rights in the mind and body of their partner continued. This is evidenced by continuing to disallow consent as a defense in criminal conversation and alienation of affections. Both these actions were historically based on the legal inferiority of the wife who was deemed incapable of consenting to the injury of her superior, her husband. H. Clark, THE LAW OF DOMESTIC RELATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES, § 4.2, p. 267 (1987). Noting this situation, one commentator observed: The idea that one spouse can recover for an act the other spouse has willingly consented to is perhaps better suited to an era that regarded one spouse as the property of another. Prosser and Keeton, supra, at 917. While the rationale for the cause of action of tortious interference with the marital relation transformed during this century, its origin grounded in property concepts remained. Initially such suits were blatantly viewed as compensatory. But when a wife no longer qualified within legal perceptions as her husband's chattel, the reasoning explaining the purpose behind such actions was altered. Since the husband no longer owned his wife, courts justified the continued existence of this tort as a means to promote and maintain the marriage. Though still viewed as compensatory in nature because it is a civil suit, in reality such cases are indeed punitive. The third party is seen as a malicious seducer wreaking havoc upon the harmonious marital couple. These common law actions thus reason that the third-party must be punished for his misdeeds by payment to the aggrieved spouse. H. Clark, supra, at 267; Feinsinger, supra, at 995.