Court Opinion

ID: 9602798
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:00:00.647729+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:06.639599
License: Public Domain

DOOLING, J.—I dissent.
While the plaintiff’s testimony presents a bizarre case on its facts and the plaintiff was impeached in certain particulars the trial judge resolved the evidence in favor of the plaintiff and under the settled rule, which is such a commonplace of our appellate procedure as to require no citation of authority, the credibility of the witnesses and the weight of the evidence are left solely to the determination of the trial court and this court cannot reweigh the evidence on appeal. It is only by reweighing the evidence that my associates are able to say: “On a careful reading of the evidence it seems that it is insufficient to show that a putative marriage ever existed.”
The plaintiff testified that she arranged with a lawyer in Texas to secure a divorce from her prior husband and that in January, 1942, she received a letter from this lawyer assuring her that the divorce would be secured immediately, and believing that she was divorced she entered into what she was led by defendant to believe was a valid marriage with defendant a few months thereafter. The decree of divorce from her former husband was in fact not entered until 1944 but plaintiff did not learn of this until shortly before the *269trial of this action; and while defendant also had a wife she did not know this fact and believed that he and she had entered into a valid marriage. In the face of this testimony, which the trial court made the basis of its findings, it is only by reweighing* the evidence, and deciding that what the trial court believed this court does not, that the court can say: “It is clear that both parties were then married, that they knew they were then married and not divorced, that they knew that they could not enter into a marriage relation until the prior marriages were dissolved.”
Equally must this court reweigh the evidence to make its finding, contrary to the finding of the trial court, that the contract of the parties called for them to live in the state of adultery. The trial court found “that plaintiff entered into said marriage in good faith, honestly believing herself to be the true and legal wife of the defendant” and that “plaintiff in reliance on the oral contract to pool assets and earnings . . . and in the belief that she was legally married to the defendant, lived with the defendant ... as the wife of the defendant, from April 25th, 1942, to the 5th day of January, 1950.”
The plaintiff was an ignorant woman who could barely read and write and her bona fides and the deception practiced on her by defendant are corroborated by the fact that defendant wrote letters to her which he signed: “Loving Husband” and represented to others in her presence that she was his wife. Even the fact that she at one time filed a suit for divorce against him, which the majority opinion cites as casting doubt on her credibility as to the date of the putative marriage, might itself be considered some corroboration of her good faith. Those considerations, however, are not our concern on appeal but were for the trial judge to consider in exercising his function, which is clearly not ours, as trier of the facts.
Under the findings of the trial court, which are supported by substantial evidence, the innocent party to the putative marriage is entitled to the quasi-community property rights which are the basis of the judgment here under attack. (Vallera v. Vallera, 21 Cal.2d 681, 683 [134 P.2d 761]; Figoni v. Figoni, 211 Cal. 354 [295 P. 339]; Schneider v. Schneider, 183 Cal. 335 [191 P. 533, 11 A.L.R. 1386]; Coats v. Coats, 160 Cal. 671 [118 P. 441, 36 L.R.A.N.S. 844].)