Hoadley v. Hoadley

• Citation: 244 N.Y. 424,155 N.E. 728
• Parties: HOADLEY v. HOADLEY.
• Decision Date: 23 February 1927
• Court: New York Court of Appeals

244 N.Y. 424

155 N.E. 728

HOADLEY

v.HOADLEY.

Court of Appeals of New York.

Feb. 23, 1927.

Action by Leon D. Hoadley against Elsie Rebecca Hoadley. From a judgment of the Appellate Division (217 App. Div. 799, 216 N. Y. S. 845), affirming a judgment of the Special Term, entered on an order which granted defendant's motion for judgment on the pleadings, plaintiff appeals by permission.

Affirmed. See, also, 217 App. Div. 808, 217 N. Y. S. 917.

Appeal from Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third department.

Arthur J. Ruland, of Binghamton, for appellant.

Laverne M. Twining, of Binghamton, for respondent.

CARDOZO, C. J.

Plaintiff was married to defendant in 1912. He says that she was then a lunatic, ‘wholly unable to understand the nature of the contract of marriage and its effects and consequences.’ Ignorant, he says, of the lunacy at the time of the marriage, he lived with her for 10 years, till the fact of her lunacy was adjudged in appropriate proceedings. In the meantime two children were born of the union. She is now, and for some years has been, an inmate of an asylum. He asks that nullity of the marriage be judicially declared.

The appeal brings up the question whether a marriage, voidable for insanity, may be annulled at the suit of the spouse who is sane. The question is a new one in this court. It has been the subject of conflicting decisions in the courts below. One Appellate Division, in Reed v. Reed (195 App. Div. 531, 186 N. Y. S. 897), and again in the case at hand, has held against the right of action. Another Appellate Division has reached a contrary conclusion (Marvis v. Marvis, 216 App. Div. 291, 215 N. Y. S. 43). In accord with the latter ruling are some decisions at Special Term. Liske v. Liske (Sup.) 135 N. Y. S. 176;Whitney v. Whitney, 121 Misc. Rep. 485, 201 N. Y. S. 227.

At common law a marriage with a lunatic was not merely voidable, but void. 1 Blackstone, Comm. 438; 2 Kent's Comm. 76; Pollock, Contracts (8th Ed.) 95, 96; 19 Halsbury Laws of England, § 823; Wightman v. Wightman, 4 Johns. Ch. 343, 345;Patterson v. Gaines, 6 How. [U. S.] 550, 553, 592, 12 L. Ed. 553; Rawdon v. Rawdon, 28 Ala. 565; Winslow v. Troy, 97 Me. 130, 53 A. 1008; Bell v. Bennett, 73 Ga. 784; Floyd County v. Wolfe, 138 Iowa, 749, 752, 117 N. W. 32;Matter of Gregorson's Estate, 160 Cal. 21, 116 P. 60, L. R. A. 1916C, 697, Ann. Cas. 1912D, 1124;Dunphy v. Dunphy, 161 Cal. 87, 118 P. 445; Elliott v. Gurr (1812) 2 Phillim. 16, 19; Browning v. Reane, 2 Phillim. 69. Sentence of nullity was unnecessary to avoid its obligation.Sentence, when pronounced, was the declaration of an accomplished fact. For ‘the good order and decorum of society,’ as well as for ‘the peace and conscience’ of the parties, the chancellor might intervene to set aside an apparent obstruction to remarriage. He did this, however, in the exercise of his general jurisdiction, which was independent of any statute, to give relief in cases of lunacy or fraud. Wightman v. Wightman, supra; Perry v. Perry, 2 Paige, 501;Griffin v. Griffin, 47 N. Y. 134, 138, 139. Perhaps even in those days, the marriage, though severed without sentence, was void sub modo, or in a secondary sense. There is support for the doctrine that it might be ratified by the concurrent action of the parties, and thus made valid from the beginning, after reason was restored. Cf. Eversley, Domestic Relations, pp. 74, 75, and Wightman v. Wightman, supra. A parallel for such a holding is to be found in the effect at common law of a marriage with a minor under the age of consent. 1 Black. Comm. 437; Co. Litt. bk. 1, c. 10, pp. 123, 124; Gathings v. Williams, 5 Ired. (N. C.) 487, 44 Am. Dec. 57, note. There, also, sentence was unnecessary, yet confirmation was permitted. As long as this view prevailed, there was no room for a holding that the sane spouse and the insane one were on planes of inequality as suitors for relief. The conception of the marriage as void persists in England even now, though it is recognized as an anomalous departure from the rule as to the effect of lunacy upon other contracts of a lunatic not so found by inquisition.

‘Marriage, however, is a peculiar transaction, and the exceptional treatment of it in our law, though perhaps historically due to the influence, in ecclesiastical courts, of more general rules of civil or canon law, may well be justified on grounds of convenience.’ Pollock, supra.

Accordingly, the cases are many in which England have pronounced a decree of nullity England Have pronounced a decree of nullity of marriage. Durham v. Durham, L. R. 10 P. D. 80; Hunter v. Hunter, L. R. 10 P. D. 93; Cannon v. Cannon, L. R. 10 P. D. 96; Forster v. Forster, 1923, 39 T. L. R. 658; Jackson v. Jackson [1908] Prob. 308. Courts in the United States have followed the common law when they have been unfettered by a statute. Little v. Little, 13 Gray (Mass.) 264. The question remains whether the same rule is to govern in jurisdictions where the effect of lunacy is to make the marriage voidable. Cf. the query in Wiser v. Lockwood's Estate, 42 Vt. 720, 722.

[1] The point of departure in this state is the opinion of Chancellor Kent in Wightman v. Wightman, supra. The chancellor stated in adherence to the English rule that the marriage was void ipso facto, but that a decree was appropriate even if unnecessary. At the same time he assumed in his opinion that the marriage might be ratified by approval or consummation after sanity had been restored. The suit was at the instance of a wife, who had contracted the marriage when insane, and sued to annul it upon recovering her reason. There was no occasion, therefore, to determine whether a reciprocal right of action would have been conceded to the husband.

A decade after Wightman v. Wightman a new form and content was given by the Revised Statutes to the law of marriage and annulment. Marriages that were incestuous or bigamous were declared to be ‘absolutely void.’ 2 R. S. 138, §§ 3, 5. Marriages, contracted by persons incapable of contracting, or whose consent had been obtained by force or fraud, were thereafter to be void from the time their nullity was declared by a court of competent authority. Revisers' Notes, p. 87; 2 R. S. 139, § 4. Cf. Matter of Moncrief's Will, 235 N. Y. 390, 139 N. E. 550, 27 A. L. R. 1117. At the same time competent authority was established and defined.

‘The chancellor, may, by a sentence of nullity, declare void the marriage contract, for either of the following causes, existing at the time of the marriage: (1) That the parties, or one of them, had not attained the age of legal consent. (2) That the former husband or wife of one of the parties, was living; and that the marriage with such former husband or wife, was then in force. (3) That one of the parties was an idiot or lunatic. (4) That the consent of one of the parties was obtained by force or fraud. (5) That one of the parties was physically incapable of entering into the marriage state.’ 2 R. S. 142, § 20.

The Domestic Relations Law (Cons. Laws, c. 14) of our own day maintains the same distinctions. The one class of marriages is now characterized as void and the other class as voidable. D. R. L. §§ 5, 6, 7. Along with this division there came with the Revised Statutes a comprehensive regulationof remedial rights. When annulment was sought on the ground that one of the parties was under the age of legal consent, it ‘may be brought by the parent or guardian entitled to the custody of such minor, or by the next friend of such minor,’ but in no case was a marriage to ‘be annulled on the application of a party who was of legal age at the time it was contracted,’ nor when ‘the parties, after they had attained the age of consent, had for any time freely cohabited as husband and wife.’ 2 R. S. 142, § 21. When annulment was sought ‘on the ground that a former husband or wife of one of the parties, was living,’ it might be ‘declared void on the application of either of the parties, during the lifetime of the other, or upon the application of such former husband or wife.’ Section 22. When annulment was sought on the ground of the idiocy of one of the parties, it might be declared void ‘on the application of any relative of such idiot, interested to avoid the marriage, at any time during the lifetime of either of the parties.’ Section 24. When annulment was sought on the ground of the lunacy of the parties, it might be ‘declared void at any time, during the continuance of that lunacy, or after the death of the lunatic in that state, during the lifetime of the other party to the marriage, on the application of any relative of the lunatic, interested to avoid the marriage.’ Section 25. Where, during the lifetime of both the parties to the marriage, annulment was sought on the ground of idiocy or lunacy, and no suit for such relief was prosecuted by a relative, a sentence of nullity might be pronounced ‘on the application of any person admitted by the court to prosecute, as the next friend of such idiot or lunatic.’ Section 26. The marriage of a lunatic might also be declared void, upon the application of the lunatic, after the restoration of reason; ‘but in such case, no sentence of nullity’ was to be pronounced, if the parties had ‘freely cohabited as husband and wife, after the lunatic was restored to a sound mind.’ Section 27. ‘Children of a marriage annulled on the ground of lunacy or idiocy’ were to be ‘entitled to succeed in the same manner as legitimate children, to the real and personal estate of the parent, who was of sound mind.’ Section 28. A marriage might be annulled on the ground that the consent of one of the parties had been ‘obtained by force or fraud, during the lifetime of the parties, or one of them, on the application of the party whose consent was so obtained, or of the parent or guardian of such party, or of some relative interested to contest the validity of the marriage.’ Section 30. A suit might also be maintained...