Court Opinion

ID: 9538254
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:33:50.918614+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:57:42.203755
License: Public Domain

WELCH, Justice
(dissenting).
In this action the claimant seeks to recover a death benefit award under the Workmen’s Compensation Law. As I read the law and the court decisions applying it, this claimant, (Marie A.) in order to prevail must establish two things: 1. That she was a dependent of the deceased at and prior to the time of his death, and -2-that she was related to him and was an heir at law of deceased.
In my view she has not established either one of these essential facts.
This is in fine a contest between two women, “Opal Norine” and “Marie A” as to which is and was the surviving widow and dependent of the deceased. When he died he was living with “Opal N” as his wife. They had been married by formal license and ceremonial marriage by a minister in *209the usual manner five months before, all as shown by appropriate records, and during those five months this couple lived together as the ordinary married couple, the wife making and keeping the home and the husband earning the living and providing for her. All this is positively proven and no one disputes it.
After this man’s death, when he could not appear and testify, and his widow “Opal Norine” being unaware of all details of past years, “Marie A” appeared as claimant, asserting an association with deceased over a period of three or four years which she contended ultimately became a living together as husband and wife until as she says they “separated” in September, 1957. And she had supporting witnesses who saw them while they lived together.
By her own testimony her association with deceased and/or her living with him began as pastime performance, when he was single, but she had a husband. At page 81 of the record she admitted it was a “shack job” between them. She did contend that thereafter, while living with deceased, she and her husband were divorced. But although there was ample time for it, she and deceased never married, just continued their joint dwelling until for some reasons which do not appear, she “separated” from him in September, 1957.
From the whole record I am convinced that she did not prove she ever was the wife of the deceased. Whatever was the relationship between “Marie A” and deceased it terminated when they “separated” in September, 1957. At that time she left him. She testified that she saw him again in December, 1957, on the Friday before Christmas when they visited together in a Chickasha Motel for the night. That episode she now labels as a “living together at that time as man and wife,” though more realistic definitions might be applied to it. Anyway, whatever they did or did not do on that night of the holiday season one would hardly consider that as establishing a definite and legal matrimonial alliance, or even as resurrecting or renewing or revitalizing any such an alliance which had theretofore flowered for a time then wilted away by her own act of termination (whatever the relationship was.)
The majority take this winter night episode as recreating or extending the relationship so as to conclude that they did not “separate” until December, 1957, but she makes it so clear in her testimony that she left him in September, 1957, that I think we should leave it that way without giving too much force and effect to the motel night in or near Chickasha,
I agree with the majority opinion that “On the issue under consideration it is our province and duty to review the evidence and make an independent finding from the evidence.”
In my review of the evidence I find much confusion and numerous discrepancies in the testimony of “Marie A” and her supporting witnesses. Entirely too much of that for me to find or to join in a finding that her case is strong enough to overcome the definite and real presumption in favor of ceremonial marriages, such as the one under which the decedent Row and his wife “Opal Norine Row” lived at the time of, and for five months prior to his death.
I cannot see in the evidence any sufficient showing that these parties became married when they first started living together, which was while she was undivorced from her former husband, Mr. Sunday, or that they became married when they moved to Missouri and lived there for two or three years, a state which does not recognize common law marriage at all, or that they became married when they moved back to Oklahoma a few months before she left him in September, 1957. Their being together in Oklahoma was merely a continuation of whatever their association had been before, not a common law marriage in Missouri, but merely a dwelling together, perhaps in harmony or good companionship, or I should say an acceptable companionship, but not a marriage. Both parties well knew the difference between marriage and non-marriage. Both had been married before and *210by ceremonial marriage. They knew how to become married if they wanted to, and therefore it would follow that they knew how to remain unmarried if they wanted to, and this latter they did, as I view it.
I strongly favor and support and urge the presumption that goes with every ceremonial marriage, even after, or especially after, it lasts to the very day of the death of the husband, from the day of the ceremony to the date of his death.
There appears to have been no claim by “Marie A” that she was Row’s wife from the time she “separated” from him in September, 1957, until he died in September, 1958, working to support his married wife “Opal N” risking and losing his life under circumstances that left a rich reward to be claimed and contested for.
The contentions against “Marie A” are not based upon any contention that she separated from Row “in December, 1957” as referred to in the majority opinion. She testified positively that she left him in September, 1957. Nothing at all occurred between them thereafter except a night together in a motel in December, 1957. Thus I find nothing in the record to support the statement that “until in December, 1957, employee (Row) and claimant (Marie A) lived together.” She said she left him in September, 1957.
Nor do I find anything in the record to support the statement that “at time of separation employee made a promise to claimant to send her money, but failed to do so or otherwise support her.” The most she said about this was when she testified at R 134 after she testified about telephone conversations with him in early 1958, she said, but without indicating when it was, that he offered to send her money if she needed it, but so far as the record shows she never did or never advised him she did, or tried to get money from him as his wife or otherwise.
Nor do I find any evidence that “Marie A” the claimant was a dependent of the deceased. She testified she “separated” from him in September, 1957, and that his last contribution to her of any kind was made when she later saw him in December, 1957, nor is it disclosed what kind or character of “contribution” he made to her on that winter night in the Motel room at Chickasha. So if deceased ever made any contribution to the support of “Marie A” all that had ceased in 1957, before he married “Opal” on the 15th day of April, 1958, and before he died on September 29, 1958. She specifically admitted that she had not been dependent on him in any manner since December, 1957, and it seems to me she has not been in any manner dependent on him since September, 1957, a year before he died in September, 1958.
Considering all of her testimony I cannot find either that she was the wife, or the dependent, of this man who died living with his ceremonially married wife Opal Norine.
I am well committed to this rule which I state as follows:
“When two single persons are joined together in ceremonial marriage and live together in such wedlock continuously until the husband is taken by death, the survivor is his widow, and when thereafter another woman appears, and for the definite and sole purpose of taking from such widow the substantial sum of money recoverable for the husband’s death, she claims that in former years she and the husband associated together intimately and though never married, and though such associations were finally terminated by the other woman at least a number of months before the ceremonial marriage, yet she desires such associations to be accepted as a so-called common law marriage, to destroy the ceremonial marriage so that she may take all the money from the widow, such claim should not be looked upon with favor, and should be quickly disallowed unless it is supported by the most compelling circumstances and the most thoroughly convincing evidence to drive inescapably to the sustaining of such claim, and to not only fully justify, but to *211compel that the judicial discretion and conscience be applied to a departure from the presumption of validity which accompanies and sustains all normal ceremonial marriages that endure un-attacked until dissolved by death.”
Application of that rule to this case would deny the right of “Marie A” as an afterthought to base this claim for cash on the circumstances here shown. It seems to me to be an after-thought because after she left Row she never claimed to be his wife until after he died and left this cash reward for his widow. Even after Row married Opal Norine, Marie A. never claimed she had been his wife until after he died and left this reward for his widow.
I am authorized to state that DAVISON, J., joins in these views.