Court Opinion

ID: 9865603
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 19:05:23.847511+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:40:33.354267
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING.
We have reread this record and the decisions cited by counsel for the plaintiff in error. He directs us to no new principles or authorities which we had not thoroughly considered before writing the original opinion. It will be noted that in the last paragraph in the original opinion this court made the following observation which, we confess, is obiter dicta, but which we made with the hope that it might reflect some light on our position under the facts of the case we were deciding, to wit: :‘lt is unnecessary for us to discuss the benefits or rights of parties presumed to be married during the period between the expiration of seven years, when the spouse was no longer presumed to be living, and the time the spouse was determined by the evidence to be in life.” In the hope that it may further illuminate our confirmed opinion under the facts in this case, we may add, without deciding the question, that there might be confidential communications, conduct and relations, arising between the husband and wife, in both civil and criminal cases, from the time of the expiration of the seven .years and after the second marriage, which would be clothed with the presumption of validity where the communications and conduct of either were received during the marital relationship between the time of the second marriage and the time when sufficient evidence is produced to prove the fact of the life of the first spouse, overcoming the rebuttable presumption of death. Such testimony might be incompetent by reason of such valid and confidential relationship. But these questions do not arise under the facts of this case.