Court Opinion

ID: 9700216
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:16:24.159541+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:05.512672
License: Public Domain

*257SPAETH, Judge,
dissenting:
In holding that appellee has met his burden of proving that he was an “innocent and injured spouse,” the majority relies on Barr v. Barr, 232 Pa.Super. 9, 331 A.2d 774 (1974). There, the husband admitted having an affair, but his wife accepted him back into the house after she became aware of his infidelity, and continued to live with him for eight years. Here, appellee may have had several affairs during the parties’ four year marriage, and while appellant might be said to have acquiesced in appellee’s activities, the record is sketchy. At one point appellant testified that she “just more or less swallowed” appellee’s stories. N.T. 37. Later she testified that she was hurt by them. N.T. 48. Moreover, as the majority itself recognizes, appellee spent a weekend with another woman before the marriage was “irretrievably lost.” Although appellee claims that he went away with the other woman to help her with family problems, appellant suspected infidelity because the other woman’s husband called her repeatedly during the weekend in question and asked her where appellee was. N.T. 71.
Given the drastic consequence of divorce under Pennsylvania law, specifically, the termination of any right of the wife to support, I am unwilling to rely on such a record. There should be a careful inquiry into all facts relevant to a divorce. Cortese v. Cortese, 163 Pa. Super. 553, 556, 63 A.2d 420, 422 (1949). If the master fails to make such inquiry, the lower court should, either by remanding to the master for further hearing or by itself securing testimony. Barr v. Barr, supra, 232 Pa. Super, at 14-15, 331 A.2d at 777. If the lower court does not thus ensure an adequate record, we should remand, for when the record is incomplete we cannot in good conscience discharge our responsibility to make an independent review of the record, and arrive at our own findings. In Barr v. Barr, supra, the principal issue was whether the wife’s conduct — which the husband said constituted indignities — was caused by the wife’s mental condition. Finding after an independent review that the record on this issue was insufficient, we remanded for a further hearing. That is what I believe we should do here.