Court Opinion

ID: 9751235
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 16:15:42.109287+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:40.221566
License: Public Domain

*218Dissenting Opinion by
Wright, J.:
The divorce law1 provides that “it shall be lawful for the innocent and injured spouse to obtain a divorce from the bond of matrimony, whenever . . . the other spouse ... (d) Shall have committed wilful and malicious desertion, and absence from the habitation, of the injured and innocent spouse, without a reasonable cause, for and during the term and space of two years (italics supplied)”. In the present case the habitation was owned by the wife. It was the husband Avho absented himself. I cannot subscribe to the proposition that this is desertion by the wife.
The majority opinion is apparently based upon the theory of constructive desertion. In the words of a distinguished President Judge of this Court,2 constructive desertion is “a term unknown to our law”. The present statutory language was analyzed in the light of the prior legislation in Young v. Young, 82 Pa. Superior Ct. 492. Judge Henderson there said: “We cannot regard evidence of cruelty or indignities practiced by the wife as sufficient to establish a desertion of her husband by her. The law provides a specific remedy for a husband injured by the cruelty of his wife or by her conduct amounting to indignities to his person, and to this the injured party must appeal if he would have relief. It cannot be said Avith legal accuracy where a wife’s conduct has become so intolerable to her husband that he finds it advisable or necessary to take up another habitation, and where his wife remains in the home which they have jointly occupied through a period of years, that his wife has wilfully and maliciously absented herself from the habitation of her husband”.
*219The majority opinion cites only two cases. In Scanga v. Scanga, 167 Pa. Superior Ct. 133, 74 A. 2d 723, the divorce was refused. Heimovitz v. Heimovitz, 161 Pa. Superior Ct. 522, 55 A. 2d 575, involved an unusual factual situation,3 beyond which its authority should not be extended. Without agreeing that the rules set forth by way of dicta in Reiter v. Reiter, 159 Pa. Superior Ct. 344, 48 A. 2d 66, apply to the wife,4 I have concluded from an examination of the record that the instant case does not even come within those rules. Clearly it does not come within Freedman’s more limited interpretation.5
In order not to prolong this dissent, I will simply assert that in my opinion a wife is not guilty of desertion when the husband, whose responsibility it is to provide the habitation, absents himself therefrom and the wife remains therein.
President Judge Rhodes joins in this dissent.

 Act of 1929, P. D. 1237, section 10, 23 PS §10.

 Oblady, P. J. in Hartner v. Hartner, 75 Pa. Superior Ct. 342.

 Inter alia, the Municipal Court had refused to make an order of support on the ground that the wife was guilty of desertion.

 It is expressly so stated, but the cited cases from which the rules were formulated do not support the statement.

 An actual turning out of doors. See Freedman on Marriage and Divorce, Section 243.