Court Opinion

ID: 9719388
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:50:27.479344+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:06.748566
License: Public Domain

ON PETITION FOR REHEARING
Robertson, C.J.
The wife’s petition for rehearing suggests that we failed to dispose of an issue in the foregoing opinion. The substance of that issue is directed to the fate of the traditional divorce defenses of condonation, collusion, recrimination, and laches in light of the failure of the legislature to repeal those defenses.
Based upon a presumption that this issue was properly preserved in the trial court we find that these defenses are no longer applicable for the reason that their existence is founded, in varying degrees, on a fault finding system of divorce. They are not compatible, at least in the traditional role of barring termination of the marital relationship, with the spirit of the Dissolution of Marriage Act.
These defenses are of judicial origin. Although the legislature could have decreed the inapplicability of these defenses it is not absolutely necessary that they do so.
The petition for rehearing is denied in all other respects.
Lowdermilk and Lybrook, JJ., concur.
Note. — Reported at 337 N.E.2d 852.