Heath v. Heath
| Decision Date | 04 January 1932 |
| Citation | 103 Fla. 1071,138 So. 796 |
| Parties | HEATH v. HEATH. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Suit by Warren A. Heath against Rosalind E. Heath. Decree in favor of the complainant, and the defendant appeals, and the complainant files cross-assignments of error.
Decree affirmed. Appeal from Circuit Court, Polk County; Harry G. Taylor, judge.
Whitaker Brothers, of Tampa, for appellant.
Allen E. Walker, of Winter Haven, and Johnson, Bosarge & Allen, of Bartow, for appellee.
This case is here on an appeal and a crossassigment of errors by the appellee. The court below granted a divorce in favor of the husband against the wife on the ground of adultery alleged to have been committed by her with one Pat Johnson but decreed that the wife should be paid the sum of $2,000 for her equitable interest in her husband's business and property, as well as the further sum of $800 for attorney's fees. The allowance of any sum to the wife for her property interest or to compensate her attorneys is challenged by the cross-assignments of error filed by the husband, who contends that an adulterous wife is not entitled in law to have any such relief decreed to her.
The evidence of the wife's adultery, while for the most part circumstantial, is highly convincing of the defendant's guilt. There is positive testimony by the husband (corroborated by two disinterested eye witnesses whom he asked to accompany him to observe what was going on) to the effect that he suspected some improper relations by his wife with one of his former employees, Pat Johnson, whereupon he went surreptitiously to the conjugal dwelling house and there observed his wife lying on her bed clothed only in her underwear and draped with a sheer bathrobe, the former store clerk in question lying down on the bed beside he with his shoes and coat off. To hold that the chancellor was in error for accepting this testimony and refusing to believe the wife's story, to the effect that this bedroom episode was merely a harmless interview had by her with her husband's former employee for the purpose of discussing her writing for him a recommendation to enable the erstwhile clerk to obtain future employment, would be to attribute to the chancellor a degree of credulity in the infallibility of feminine righteousness, which even this modern age of generously tolerated unconventional practices by married women would find it difficuilt to countenance. We regret, therefore, that we have been able to find no ground for holding that the evidence of adultery is insufficient to support the decree rendered in the husband's favor.
In announcing this conclusion, we also deem it appropriate to say that we have carefully examined the record and perused the entire testimony of nearly a thousand pages, in the sincere hope that we would be able to find something therein which would justify us in accepting the most earnest argument made in favor of the wife's innocence by counsel for the appellant; but we have been unable to find anything in the record which justified us in refusing to believe the unfortunate woman guilty of the grave charge made by her husband against her.
On the contrary, this appears to be one of those unhappy cases too frequent in the courts, where the adultery committed seems to have been brought about by a discontented wife's ill advised infatuation with one of her husband's store clerks with whom she was thrown in contact and whose disregard for the woman he seduced led him to willfully commit a bold intrusion into his employer's home under circumstances that might well have led to violence or homicide on the part of a more excitable and less self-possessed husband, when he discovered what was going on.
To further elaborate on the evidence is unnecessary, and to review it further in this opinion would merely add to the pages of this court's official reports a...
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LaRue v. LaRue
...that a wife's economic contributions could give rise to a special equity in her husband's property upon divorce. E.g., Heath v. Heath, 103 Fla. 1071, 138 So. 796 (1932); Carlton v. Carlton, 78 Fla. 252, 83 So. 87 (1919). Originally, Florida took the position that a special equity did not ar......
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Ward v. Comm'r of Internal Revenue
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Bell v. Bell
...findings fail to establish any special equitable right to the property in question in either party. See Heath v. Heath, 103 Fla. 1071, 138 So. 796, 82 A.L.R. 537; Eakin v. Eakin, Fla.1958, 99 So.2d 854. It is error for the court, upon granting a divorce, to direct disposition of the parties......
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