Court Opinion

ID: 9848306
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:16:20.526567+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:12.204273
License: Public Domain

Buchanan, J.,
dissenting in part.
I disagree with the conclusion that there should not be an allowance of any alimony in this case. The court finds the facts to be that the husband never established a home for his wife; that he humiliated her, was rude and indifferent to her and engaged in illicit relations with another woman; and that his conduct over a long period of time adversely affected her health and nervous system to the point where she was justified in leaving him because she had taken all that she could take.
This case is not like the Babcock case (172 Va. 219, 1 S. E. 2d 328). There, as the court pointed out, the husband was past seventy, a retired minister, not in good health, and with a small income, part of which had to be used for an afflicted son; while the wife was com*396paratively a young woman and more capable of earning a living than her husband.
Here the husband is forty-one years old, owns some property and has a salary of some forty-one hundred dollars a year after deductions for income tax and social security. His conduct affected her health, caused her to seek medical aid, and to resign her teaching position, although her health has now improved and she has resumed teaching. Here is a husband who has been unfaithful to his marriage vows and has been guilty of cruelty of such degree as amounts to desertion and entitles her to a divorce. He should not be allowed to walk so carefree out of the marriage relation he has disrupted and away from all further obligations to the wife he has wronged.
“A decree for alimony is something more than an order for the payment of money. A husband who has wronged his wife must continue to contribute to her support. A decree for alimony ‘is an order compelling a husband to support his wife, and this is a public as well as a marital duty—a moral as well as a legal obligation.’ Branch v. Branch, 144 Va. 244, 132 S. E. 303, 305.” Capell v. Capell, 164 Va. 45, 49, 178 S. E. 894, 895.
Alimony “stems from the common-law right of the wife to support by her husband, which right, unless the wife by her own misconduct forfeits it, continues to exist even after they cease to live together.” Eaton v. Davis, 176 Va. 330, 338, 10 S. E. 2d 893, 897.
“Where the delinquency of the husband has been established and the wife has been compelled to seek a divorce on account of his misconduct, while alimony is not to be used as a method of punishment, ‘the court will not seek to find how light the burden may possibly be made, but what, under all the circumstances, will be a fair and just allotment.’ * *." Hawkins v. Hawkins, 187 Va. 595, 601, 47 S. E. 2d 436, 439.
I would grant the wife $75 a month as “a fair and just allotment” in this case. The court below indicated that the alimony granted by it should be reduced when the plaintiff went back to work and she offered to accept this amount before the petition for appeal was filed.
Mr. Justice Spratley joins in this dissent.