Hutchison v. Hutchison

• Decision Date: 24 July 1928
• Docket Number: 21153.
• Citation: 269 P. 341,148 Wash. 417
• Court: Washington Supreme Court
• Parties: HUTCHISON v. HUTCHISON.

269 P. 341

148 Wash. 417

HUTCHISON v. HUTCHISON.

No. 21153.

Supreme Court of Washington

July 24, 1928

Department 1.

Appeal from Superior Court, King County; Walter B. Beals, Judge.

Divorce suit by Verna Abbott Hutchison against E. H. Hutchison. From the decree, defendant appeals, and plaintiff files cross-appeal. Cause remanded, with directions.

Riddell & Brackett and T. N. Fowler, all of Seattle, for plaintiff.

Carkeek McDonald, Harris & Coryell, of Seattle, for defendant.

TOLMAN J.

Both parties have appealed from an interlocutory decree adjudging the wife to be entitled to a divorce upon the expiration of the statutory six months, awarding her certain specified personal property and effects, $5,000, to be paid one-half in cash and one-half in six months, with interest at the legal rate, and as a further property settlement the decree directs that the defendant pay to the plaintiff $100 per month for the period of one year, besides costs and attorney's fees. There is also a paragraph in the decree which reads:

'It is further ordered, adjudged, and decreed that the court hereby expressly retains jurisdiction of this cause for consideration of such application as the plaintiff may make for the allowance of alimony, either by continuing discontinuing, changing, increasing, or diminishing the amounts of such monthly payments after the expiration of the period of one year as provided for in the preceding paragraph.'

The defendant by his appeal questions the granting of the decree to the plaintiff, the amount of the allowance to her, and the continuing provisions of the decree which we have quoted while the plaintiff's cross-appeal is based upon the contention that she should have been allowed a property settlement of at least $20,000.

This is one of those cases where the trial court had far better opportunities for arriving at a just solution of the several issues of fact than we can acquire from the written record. On the divorce issue, from the record alone, we might very well hesitate to say that either party was entitled to prevail. Each had been previously married and divorced. Each was of mature years when they intermarried. The husband was some 17 years older than the wife. He was a man of substance and property, holding a responsible and lucrative position while the wife had nothing beyond her personal earnings of $25 per week as a saleslady. The husband was British born and bred. The greater part of his life was spent in London and in China, where he was an employee of a British company, and even during the twenty years spent here he was still an employee of the same British company, and of late years the manager of its branch office located in Seattle.

The husband was undoubtedly dogmatic and autocratic, but just according to his views of the situation. We find, however, no sufficient ground upon which to excuse his act in refusing to receive the wife in the home upon her return from a visit to California, taken with his consent, and his action in directing her to go to a hotel upon her arrival in the home city, where he paid her bill pending the adjustment of their difficulties, taken in connection with the other matters shown, probably was sufficient, in the light of the knowledge gained by the trial court through the study of the parties as...