Court Opinion

ID: 9725261
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:37:27.481361+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:13.086545
License: Public Domain

*266Hallows, J.
(dissenting). The trial court granted a judgment of legal separation, the relief prayed for in the complaint. This was required of the court unless it found to do so would not be in the best interests of the parties or the children of the marriage and stated the reason therefor. Sec. 247.09, Stats. To vacate or modify such judgment, sufficient cause must be shown. Sec. 247.37 (2). I find none in the facts.
At the time of the granting of the judgment, the trial court had all the facts and the recommendation of the family court commissioner. Nothing new was later presented to modify the judgment excepting that no reconciliation took place up to that time. The three other reasons, i.e.} age of the parties, remarriage could be in the best interests of one or both of them or of their children, and each party was still free to follow religious convictions concerning remarriage, all existed at the time of the granting of the legal separation. Sufficient cause in sec. 247.37 (2), Stats., means cause not existing or unknown at the time of the judgment. I do not understand a court can grant a legal separation for a trial period and one day before it loses its power to modify the judgment grant an absolute divorce because a reconciliation has not taken place. Under such an interpretation of the statutes and on the reasons given for the modification of this judgment, no purpose exists for the statute providing for legal separation.
This case is especially indicative of the erosion of public opinion concerning divorces and their disastrous economic and social effect on the fabric of our society and the tragedy and hardship they cause to the innocent party and the children involved. Here, the defendant obtained an agreement from his wife not to sue the other woman for criminal conversation or alienation of affections. Upon this security he defaulted and allowed a complaint charging adultery and cruel and inhuman treatment to go against him. On *267the eve of the finality of the judgment, the defaulting defendant, who. was married twice before, applied to the court to modify the judgment to an absolute divorce, affirming under oath in effect that his weakness of flesh, blood, and nature might cause some other woman to become pregnant and he did not desire to have his children, now in the custody of the plaintiff, exposed to that possibility or himself to be unable to give a proper name to a child he illegally and illegitimately begot. This, in essence, is the defendant’s “sufficient cause.”
The stability of the family which our laws seek to encourage and protect, aside from any moral implications in a divorce, is not enhanced by the modification of the judgment upon such a request by the defendant. Logically, if reconciliation was the goal and the reason for the judgment of legal separation, leaving it unmodified would more likely produce that result. When one is not legally permitted to roam the highways and byways in search of another mate, he may be more satisfied to make sacrifices and to appreciate the one he has. Marriage today seems not to be for better or worse but only for so long as the better lasts. This is a tragedy of our contemporary civilization.
As an epilogue, there is attached to the defendant’s brief a marriage certificate showing the defendant’s marriage (his fourth) to “the other woman” approximately six months after the modification of the judgment.
I am authorized to state Mr. Chief Justice Brown and Mr. Justice Wilkie concur in the above dissent.