Chesnut v. Chesnut
| Citation | 160 Fla. 83,33 So.2d 730 |
| Parties | CHESNUT v. CHESNUT. |
| Decision Date | 23 January 1948 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of Florida |
Hehearing Denied Feb. 20, 1948.
Appeal from Circuit Court, Alachua County; John A. H murphree, judge.
J. Harry Schad and Zach H. Douglas, both of Gainesville, for appellant.
J. C Adkins, J. C. Adkins, Jr., and Clayton, Arnow & Duncan all of Gainesville, for appellee.
Appellant and appellee were married in July 1943. The blare of the wedding bells generated frictions which blossomed into separation within a score of months. In July 1946, appellee filed suit for separate maintenance. Appellant countered with an answer and a cross bill, wherein he prayed for divorce on the ground of extreme cruelty. On final hearing appellant's prayer for divorce was denied but appellee's prayer for separate maintenance was answered with an award of $85 per month. This appeal is from the final decree.
The question with which we are confronted, is whether or not the record justifies the refusal of appellant's divorce and the award of appellee's alimony.
Both the parties were of good character and repute, but neither had previously pledged banns at the alter of Eros. The appellant had attained Man's Biblical allotment--three score years and ten (Ps. 90:10). The appellee was two score years and six. Both were 'set' like concrete in their social attitudes which criss-crossed so that she was a pain to him and he was a bore to her. The strain was so acute that he became seriously ill, she contracted a bad case of nerves and the presence of the one got to be mental torture to the other. The big trouble was total incapacity on the part of either for domestication. Seventy-five per cent of successful marriage depends on tact to cushion and bypass domestic frictions. It is much better than meeting them head on and bearing the scars they leave. When the bried and the groom are both devoid of a yen for domestication, the marital bark puts out to sea with its jib pointed to the rocks.
In the bill and answer the parties charge each other with various and sundry derelictions but we find little in the record to support them but their own testimony. It is not disputed that he is a man of modest means, and that she has held a responsible job and supported herself for many years. In personal leanings, the one was the antithesis of the other. He loved a dram and she could not tolerate liquor on the place, He was something of a society--man while she preferred the company of her family and friends and visited with them when he went wheeling to satisfy his social urge. She apparently preferred her job to being his helpmate as she held to it despite the connubial experiment. He says she did not return home for the midday meal and often did not prepare the evening meal. She says he was given to frequent outbursts of temper and paid court to another woman, seventy-five years old, who was a tenant in one of his apartments. Must have been flat philandering, but despite this and other strains, the case was one in which two-way pecadillos created a species of marital frustation that reacts to no present known social prophylactic.
The chancellor...
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...neither party is domesticated, within the meaning of that term as used by the Supreme Court of Florida in the case of Chesnut v. Chesnut (160 Fla. 83), 33 So.2d 730, where the court, in holding that a divorce rather than separate maintenance should be granted, said: " 'The big trouble was t......
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