Copeland v. Boaz
| Decision Date | 30 April 1877 |
| Citation | 68 Tenn. 223 |
| Parties | JAMES COPELAND v. THOMAS E. BOAZ. |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
FROM DYER.
Appeal from the Circuit Court. S. W. COCHRAN, Judge, pro tem.
RICHARDSON & ANDREWS for complainant.
LATTA & MARSHALL for defendant.
The suit was instituted upon the following note:
“On or before the 25th day of December next I promise to pay Thos. Boaz, trustee for my wife, five hundred dollars, for value rec'd. This June 29, 1872.
James Copeland.”
It appears from the record, the plaintiff in error and his wife had separated, and the note sued on was executed to induce her to return.
The court struck out pleas setting up these facts and charged the jury the consideration was sufficient. In both of these rulings the circuit judge was in error. The relation of husband and wife was in nothing changed by the separation. All the obligations, moral and legal, still rested upon them. The parties could not and did not by the separation diminish or enlarge their respective rights and duties under the law regulating the relation of husband and wife.
The most that can be made of the undertaking here will not carry it above the grade of an executory contract. A promise by the husband to pay to the wife, or to another for the benefit of the wife, without more, is a nudum pactum. The undertaking contravenes public policy, is primitive of separation of husband and wife, and not tolerable in law.
Reverse the judgment.
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Campbell v. Prater
... ... 219. "The undertaking contravenes ... public policy, is promotive of separation of husband and ... wife, and not tolerable in law." Copeland v ... Boaz, 68 Tenn. 223, 9 Baxt. 223, 40 Am. Rep. 89 ... "It is as much against public policy to restore ... interrupted conjugal relations ... ...
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Mosley v. Mosley, No. M2003-01686-COA-R3-CV (TN 10/29/2004)
...pre-requisite to an irreconcilable differences divorce, but rather as being a fair and equitable distribution of property. In Copeland v. Boaz, 68 Tenn. 223 (1877), post-nuptial agreements between husband and wife were declared to be against public policy. The rule in Boaz was modified to p......
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Hoyt v. Hoyt
...attacks this contract on the ground it is against public policy and void, and in support of this position cites the case of Copeland v. Boaz, 68 Tenn. 223 decided by this Court in 1877. In this case the husband, while separated from his wife, had executed a note to a trustee for the wife to......
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