Childress v. Childress

• Decision Date: 28 August 1978
• Citation: 569 S.W.2d 816
• Parties: Angeline Denise Taylor CHILDRESS b/n/f William Taylor, Petitioner-Plaintiff, v. Michael Lynn CHILDRESS, Respondent-Defendant. 569 S.W.2d 816
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

Page 816

569 S.W.2d 816

Angeline Denise Taylor CHILDRESS b/n/f William Taylor Petitioner-Plaintiff, v. Michael Lynn CHILDRESS, Respondent-Defendant.

569 S.W.2d 816

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

Aug. 28, 1978.

A. D. Walker, Jr., Dyersburg, for petitioner-plaintiff.

J. Thomas Caldwell, Ripley, for respondent-defendant.

OPINION

HARBISON, Justice.

In this case petitioner seeks to maintain a negligence action for personal injuries against her husband for an antenuptial tort. She was injured while he was operating an automobile on February 22, 1975. The parties were married on June 14, 1975. Suit was instituted about seven and one-half months later, on January 31, 1976.

Both the trial court and the Court of Appeals held that the action was barred under the rule of interspousal immunity and that respondent was entitled to summary judgment.

We granted certiorari to give further consideration to the issue. We emphasize at the outset that this case by no means involves the entire subject of interspousal immunity in tort but is limited specifically to the issue of torts committed before the parties entered into the marriage relationship.

We recognize, as did the courts below, that this subject has frequently been litigated in this state. Heretofore this Court has consistently construed the Married Women's Emancipation Act, T.C.A. § 36-601, first adopted in 1913, as not altering in any sense the common-law rules prohibiting personal tort actions between spouses. With regard to the specific subject at hand, antenuptial torts, the Court has twice so construed the statute, and has held that any claimed right of action in tort between the parties existing upon the date of their marriage was extinguished when they entered into that relationship. Monk v. Ramsey, 223 Tenn. 247, 443 S.W.2d 653 (1969); Raines v. Mercer, 165 Tenn. 415, 55 S.W.2d 263 (1932). Both cases involved personal injuries arising out of an automobile accident. If a different rule is to be adopted in the instant case, therefore, it will be necessary to overrule those two decisions.

As stated, in entering upon this inquiry, we limit our consideration entirely to the subject of prenuptial torts, because, both practically and conceptually, it seems to us that there may be differentiating factors between them and personal injury claims between spouses arising after they have entered into their marriage. With respect to post-nuptial torts, it has been consistently held in this state that no such right of action can exist or come into being because of the unique relationship between the parties. See e. g., Wooley v. Parker, 222 Tenn. 104, 432 S.W.2d 882 (1968); Hance v. Haun, 216 Tenn. 176, 391 S.W.2d 621 (1965); Gordon v. Pollard, 207 Tenn. 45, 336 S.W.2d 25 (1960); Prince v. Prince, 205 Tenn. 451, 326 S.W.2d 908 (1959). Further, it is obvious that many types of conduct that could be found to be tortious in some settings might not be so considered in the intimacy or privacy of the home.

It has been recognized that once the marriage relation has been terminated by divorce, tort actions can be maintained between the former spouses for injuries inflicted after the entry of the divorce decree. Brown v. Selby, 206 Tenn. 71, 332 S.W.2d 166 (1960). There a man murdered his former wife, and an action for her wrongful death was allowed, even though the beneficiaries were children of the parties, the theory of the Tennessee Wrongful Death Act being that the right of action was that of the decedent which survived to her nearest kin.

It is difficult to distinguish the rights of the parties in the case of an antenuptial tort from those of persons who have been divorced and are no longer married. At the time of the alleged negligent act involved in the present case, there was no impediment whatever to the claim of the petitioner. Had she filed suit and obtained judgment before her marriage, we think that it would hardly be contended that the marriage itself extinguished the judgment.

It is, of course, possible to conceive of types of tort actions which might be so inconsistent with the marriage relationship that the very fact that the parties obtained a marriage license and went through the solemnities required by Tennessee law to enter into the marital status, T.C.A. §§ 36-401 et seq., could be said to effect at least an implied, if not an express, release of the tort claim. For example, we doubt that the courts would look with much favor upon an action for breach of promise of marriage or of seduction in cases where the parties had later married.

The Tennessee Married Women's Emancipation Act, T.C.A. § 36-601, is very broadly worded. In sweeping terms it removed the disability of coverture and its effects upon property rights of women. It was a major piece of legislation and had significant impact upon many pre-existing rules of the law of domestic relations, contracts, property and procedure. We are not inclined to give it a narrow or restrictive interpretation. Robinson v. Trousdale County, 516 S.W.2d 626 (Tenn.1974).

The principal portion of the statute is as follows:

"Married women are fully emancipated from all disability on account of coverture, and the common law as to the disability of married women and its effects on the rights of the property of the wife, is totally abrogated, except as set out in §§ 36-602, 36-603, and marriage shall not impose any disability or incapacity on a woman as to the ownership, acquisition, or disposition of property of any sort, or as to her capacity to make contracts and to do all acts in reference to property which she could lawfully do, if she were not...