Feehley v. Feehley
| Decision Date | 13 December 1916 |
| Docket Number | 49. |
| Citation | 99 A. 663,129 Md. 565 |
| Parties | FEEHLEY v. FEEHLEY. |
| Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
Appeal from Circuit Court No. 2 of Baltimore City; Carroll T. Bond Judge.
"To be officially reported."
Suit by Mary K. Feehley against Timothy L. Feehley. From a decree for plaintiff, defendant appeals. Decree affirmed.
Argued before BRISCOE, BURKE, THOMAS, PATTISON, URNER, and STOCKBRIDGE, JJ.
Philip L. Sykes, of Baltimore (Emanuel M. Baum and William H Lawrence, both of Baltimore, on the brief), for appellant.
J Richard Standiford and Edwin T. Dickerson, both of Baltimore, for appellee.
The appellant and appellee were married in November, 1891. A daughter was born as a result of their union. In September, 1896, they were divorced. Fifteen years later, at the instance of the daughter, then grown to young womanhood, they were reunited. There were intervening marriages by both parties which were dissolved by judicial decree, the appellant having had one, and the appellee two, such intermediate experiences. The reunion occurred in September, 1915. In October of the following year, the appellee filed her bill of complaint against the appellant for alimony, and for the division and adjustment of their joint property interests, on the ground that she had been forced from their home by his cruelty and vicious conduct. The main defense to the suit is based upon the theory that the parties were not lawfully remarried, and therefore do not sustain the relationship upon which the right to maintain the suit is predicated.
For some months prior to the time when the remarriage is alleged by the bill to have occurred, the appellant was living as a boarder at the home of the appellee and of their daughter. The question of their being married again had been under consideration, and the appellant was inclined to the opinion that no ceremony was necessary, inasmuch as they were both Catholics, and in the view of their church the original marriage was still subsisting. On the occasion, however, of a call at the home by the priest of the parish, a ceremony was performed upon whose nature and effect depends, in large measure, the decision of the present controversy. It is to be determined whether a marriage was then celebrated with religious rites, and, if so, whether it should be held to be valid notwithstanding the conceded fact that no license for the marriage had been obtained as required by law.
The appellee and her daughter both testified that on the occasion in question a wedding ceremony was performed in full accordance with the ritual of the Catholic Church, that the priest placed his stole about his neck, had some holy water brought and a ring produced, and, taking a book from his pocket, read the service and solemnized the marriage in the customary form, including the usual questions and answers as to the mutual consent of the parties, and concluded with a blessing and the declaration that they were now husband and wife. The appellant testified that the ceremony was not a marriage, but simply a blessing. He stated that something in Latin was said by the priest and that holy water and a ring were used. The testimony of the priest was to the effect that he could not remarry the parties because his church does not recognize a divorce, and therefore the first marriage, which was solemnized in the church, was to be regarded as being still in force, but that he pronounced a blessing upon their agreement to resume the relations of matrimony. He said that he could not recall exactly what he did on that occasion. In answer to the question as to what it was his intention to do, he said, "Just to have them become husband and wife." He thought that he may have put on his stole, and that a ring was in fact used when they were asked to renew their consent, but he could not recall whether or not holy water was brought and applied.
It is the settled law of this state that "some religious ceremony" must be "super-added to the civil contract" in order that a marriage may be valid. "The law, however, does not prescribe the form, nor according to the rites of what church, the marriage shall be celebrated." Denison v. Denison, 35 Md. 380. Upon the evidence in the record before us, there can be no doubt that there was a ceremony in connection with the event now under inquiry, and that it was religious in its character. It was conducted by a duly ordained minister in the formal exercise of his sacred office. It was unquestionably intended to be an essential feature of the new marital agreement into which the parties were entering. The priest, and the man and woman before him, understood that he was officiating there in order that they might live together in lawful wedlock. The words and emblems he employed were strictly appropriate to that object. The sole purpose of his presence and ministration was to give religious sanction to their reunion. In our judgment that result was effectually accomplished, and the validity of the remarriage is not open to question on the ground that it was not solemnized by a religious ceremony.
The contention that the failure to secure a license rendered the marriage void must likewise be overruled. While the statute provides that no persons within the state "shall be joined in marriage until a license shall have been obtained from the clerk of the circuit court for the county in which the marriage is to be performed, or if in Baltimore City from the clerk of the court of common pleas," or unless banns shall have been published as therein described, or except in the case of marriages according to the ceremony used by the Society of Quakers, and while punishment by fine is directed to be imposed upon ministers and others who marry persons without a license, there is no purpose expressed in the statute that a marriage otherwise validly contracted and celebrated shall be void if the prescribed license shall not have been procured. Code, art. 62, §§ 4, 11. On the contrary, there is an implied recognition of the efficacy of marriages solemnized without a license in the provision that a minister who shall "marry" persons in the absence of such official...
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