Court Opinion

ID: 9810354
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 21:48:09.968236+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:39:52.240883
License: Public Domain

BnowN, J.,
concurring in result: I concur in the opinion of the Court construing the act of 1905. It is evident that when the General Assembly of 1905 enacted the divorce law of that session it had in mind the indictable offense of fornication and adultery, and intended that the offense of the husband must amount to that in frequency before the wife could' secure a divorce, but that one act of adultery is sufficient to justify the husband in putting away the wife. But, with entire deference, I cannot concur in the suggestion of the Court that there are “grave reasons for the distinction made by this legislation.” On the contrary, I feel that such legislative discrimination against the wife and in favor of the husband is inherently and morally wrong, and unjust to the wives and mothers of our State. The result, as the law now stands, is, that if the husband be endowed with the powers which Gibbon ascribes to Mahomet, he may with impunity have intercourse with thirty different prostitutes in one night, *228and the unfortunate wife must bang ber helpless bead in shame and bear ber humiliation as best she can; while if the husband shall confine his attentions to one “soiled dove” for a few times only, the law will avenge the wrong done the outraged wife by divorcing her from her unfaithful spouse. On the contrary, let the wife step aside but once from the path of virtue, and the strong arm of the law will turn her out of her husband’s house to starve, and free him forever from her degrading company, if he so wills. “Grave and weighty reasons” for such a discrimination against the pure women of this State do not readily suggest themselves to me. On the contrary, it appears to me that every consideration of justice and right demands that the husband should be held to as 'strict a moral accountability as the wife. Neasons for such discrimination do not seem to have suggested themselves to legislators in other States. One act of adultery on the part of either party to the marriage is ground for absolute divorce in every State of this Union except North Carolina, Kentucky and Texas (9 Am. and Eng. Ene., p. 746), and no injurious results have followed in those States which have repudiated the fallacy that public policy requires such a discrimination between husband and wife. Our law is more unjust than the ancient common law of our English ancestors in its treatment of women in this respect. In those days, if either party committed adultery it was ground for divorce from, bed and board, but not a vinculo matrimonii, for the reason that, if absolute divorce were allowed to depend upon a matter within the power of either of the parties, it would probably be extremely frequent. 1 Blackstone, p. 441. Under our law, the wife is not even justified in leaving the husband for one act of infidelity, and if her outraged feelings force her to do so, the husband need not support her. The fear that the husband will commit one act of adultery in order to enable his wife to procure a divorce is absolutely groundless, as is shown by the experience of those States which have *229done equal and exact justice in tbis matter, and where divorces are no more frequent than in tbis State and her two sister Commonwealths. The truth is, that a husband who will openly commit one act of adultery to make evidence against himself will commit as many such acts as are necessary to accomplish his purpose. In the ancient days of feudalism the adulterous wife frequently suffered death, not so much because of any moral delinquency on her part as because the blood of the heir might become tainted. We have no primogeniture now, and the husband can devise his lands away from his “tainted heir” if he so wills. This reason, if ever valid, is now worthless, since we are considering only the rights of the wife against the husband, and not of the husband against the wife. The law should not be relaxed in favor of the wife, but made stricter in regard to the husband, so as to hold both to the same standard of conjugal loyalty to'each other and require both to obey the commandment of God.
It is to be hoped that some future General Assembly will abolish this unjust discrimination and follow the example of the forty-three States of this Union in dealing impartially between those who plight their mutual faith at the altar: