Arrington v. Arrington

• Decision Date: 31 October 1884
• Citation: 91 N.C. 301
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: PATTIE ARRINGTON v. W. H. ARRINGTON and others.

91 N.C. 301

PATTIE ARRINGTON

v.W. H. ARRINGTON and others.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

October Term, 1884.

OPINION TEXT STARTS HEREAppeal--Practice

This court will not entertain appeals from detached rulings upon some of the matters in dispute; but all matters necessary to a disposition of the case should be passed on and settled in a single trial, and the whole case brought up on appeal. The method of disposing of this controversy pointed out by SMITH, C. J.

( Hines v. Hines, 84 N. C., 122; Com'rs v. Satchwell, 88 N. C., 1; Jones v. Call, 89 N. C., 188; Grant v. Reese, 90 N. C., 3, cited and approved.)

CIVIL ACTION tried at Fall Term, 1883, of VANCE Superior Court, before MacRae, J.

This action was commenced in Nash superior court, and upon affidavit removed to Vance for trial. The suit was brought upon a judgment, recovered in Franklin superior court, in favor of the defendant W. H. Arrington and the plaintiff (who were married on the 14th of January, 1868), against the sureties upon the bond of L. N. B. Battle as guardian of plaintiff, and against the sureties upon the administration bond of said Battle as administrator of John Evans, a deceased surety upon said guardian bond.

The defendants appealed from the judgment of the court below. The matters relating to the point decided by this court are sufficiently stated in its opinion.

Mr. Joseph J. Davis, for plaintiff .

Messrs. Fuller & Snow and E. C. Smith, for defendants .

SMITH, C. J.

This action is prosecuted by the plaintiff Pattie D. B. Arrington to enforce payment of a judgment recovered in the name of William H. Arrington, then her husband, and herself in the superior court of Franklin upon an indebtedness due to her prior to their marriage in the year 1868, subject to several part payments, upon an allegation that the marriage relation between them has been dissolved by a decree rendered by a court possessing jurisdiction in the state of Illinois, in her behalf, restoring her status as a feme sole.

Subsequently, the said William H. Arrington and the members of the partnership firm of W. H. Morris & Sons, to whom he had assigned the judgment, were made parties defendant in the action, and they as well as the debtors, the original defendants, put in answers and set up different defences; the said Arrington and his assignees controverting the validity and effect of the divorce proceeding and the alleged decree, and claiming the right under the law in force at the date of the marriage of the former, transferred to the assignees, to reduce the debt into possession and appropriate the proceeds to their use.

The only issue made up and passed on by the jury was as to the legal efficacy of the decree of divorce in dissolving the bonds of matrimony formed in this state, and in reinstating the feme plaintiff in the possession of her antecedent right to the fund in dispute as a feme sole freed from her coverture. This issue, determined in her favor, was followed by a judgment declaring “that the said Pattie D. B. Arrington is divorced from the said William H. Arrington, and was so divorced on the 16th day of November, 1880,” and further, that “this action is retained for further...