Bassett v. Bassett
Citation | 280 S.W. 430 |
Decision Date | 04 February 1926 |
Docket Number | 25043 |
Parties | BASSETT v. BASSETT |
Court | United States State Supreme Court of Missouri |
J. H Whitecotton, of Paris, for appellant.
W. W Barnes, of Paris, for respondent.
In Banc.
Action for divorce, which resulted in a finding and decree nisi for plaintiff. Defendant appealed to St. Louis Court of Appeals where the decree nisi was affirmed by a divided court. One of the judges of that court, deeming the opinion of the majority to be contrary to the decision of the Kansas City Court of Appeals in Revercomb v. Revercomb, 222 S.W. 899, in his dissenting opinion filed, asked that the cause be certified and transferred to this court for final determination under the mandate of article 6, § 6, of the Amendment of 1884 to our state Constitution, which was done by order of record in that court.
Plaintiff's petition is based solely upon the statutory ground that defendant has offered him such indignities as render his condition intolerable. The petition charges:
'That the defendant, wholly disregarding her duties as the wife of plaintiff, offered plaintiff such indignities as to render his condition intolerable and unendurable in this, to wit:
'Plaintiff further states that defendant was greatly enraged at plaintiff and abused both plaintiff and his father on account of a sale of real estate made by his father in which he had no part or over which he had no control, and defendant insisted that plaintiff's father should have given the farm to plaintiff.
'Plaintiff states that he did everything in his power to avoid the dissolution of the marriage vow, but that defendant's treatment of him as aforesaid was such as to render his condition in life intolerable and unendurable and greatly to his humiliation, and that said treatment was a species of mental cruelty.'
The answer admits the marriage, but denies each and every other allegation of the petition. The decree nisi contains special findings in favor of plaintiff, following the allegations of the petition quite closely.
This being a divorce action, we deem it our duty on appeal to state fairly and fully the facts as gathered from the record. The parties were married at Oklahoma City, Okl., on October 13, 1906, and lived together as husband and wife until October 28, 1919, a period of 13 years. At the time of the marriage, the plaintiff husband was 27 years of age and his wife was 41 years of age, she being about 141/2 years older than her husband. Both parties were reared in Monroe county, Mo., and come from good family stock. Defendant had been a school-teacher, and at the time of her marriage and afterwards was the editor and part owner of a weekly newspaper at Madison, Monroe county, which paper had evidently been owned by her father before his death. The parties had known each other, we infer, for many years, perhaps all their lives, for the husband testified that he had known his wife 25 years before the marriage, and knew that she was older than himself. He had courted her 'for a year or so, might have been three or four years,' before they were married. The husband had prepared himself for the profession of dentistry, which profession, however, he appears to have practiced for only about a year, thereafter farming or working upon his father's farm near or adjacent to the town limits of Madison. The couple remained in Oklahoma only about two weeks after the marriage, returning to their home town, Madison, where they have continuously resided. Upon their return to Madison they went to housekeeping, and lived in a rented house from November, 1906, to April, 1907, when they went to the home of the husband's parents to reside for perhaps two years or a little longer. Plaintiff's parents deeded to the defendant wife a small tract of land of about an acre in one corner of their farm, situate about 2 or 3 blocks from the home of the husband's parents. The wife, having a certain amount of money of her own, built a house thereon with her own money, and in this house and upon said land the parties lived together as husband and wife until their separation in the latter part of October, 1919.
Plaintiff's father owned a farm of 40 acres immediately adjoining the home of the couple, which was platted into town lots and sold in September or October, 1918. In platting the land, it was purposed to lay out several streets, which would lie adjacent to the smaller tract on which plaintiff and defendant lived, and which would cause said tract to have streets or roads on all sides thereof, rendering the premises and home liable to dust and some discomfort therefrom. There is some testimony that defendant was much concerned at the resultant conditions arising from the sale and laying out of this 40 acre farm, and that she became somewhat 'out of humor' by reason thereof. Plaintiff claims that from that time defendant refused to speak to his father, even when the father was on his death bed a year later, and would not visit plaintiff's parents or enter their home. We will more fully discuss this phase of the testimony later.
Respecting the so-called indignities offered him by defendant, the plaintiff testified:
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