Jones v. Jones
| Decision Date | 21 May 1935 |
| Citation | 161 So. 836,119 Fla. 824 |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
| Parties | JONES v. JONES. |
Rehearing Denied June 19, 1935.
En Banc.
Suit by W. F. Jones against Augusta Jones, who filed a cross-complaint. From a decree dismissing the bill and granting the relief sought by the cross-complaint complainant appeals.
Reversed. Appeal from Circuit Court, Duval County; George Couper Gibbs, judge.
George E. Turner and John A. Rush, both of Jacksonville, for appellant.
Charles A. Powers and Charles A. Powers, Jr., both of Jacksonville for appellee.
In this case a special master found and reported to the court that at the time the defendant and cross-complainant below, Augusta Jones, married the complainant and cross-defendant below, W F. Jones, she had a living husband, and that by fraud and deception practiced upon the intended husband, the said Augusta Jones induced said W. F. Jones to marry her, and that thereupon said W. F. Jones did marry the said Augusta Jones without any knowledge of the fact that she then had a living husband. The master recommended a decree of annulment for the husband, that the child of said marriage, Charlotte May Jones, a female minor, should be awarded to the mother with an allowance of a proper sum of money for the support, maintenance, and education of the child, and that $10 a week should be allowed and paid to the defendant by the complainant for that purpose, and that solicitor's fees in the sum of $100 should be decreed against said W. F. Jones.
Upon exceptions to the master's report, the chancellor reversed the special master in part, and entered in lieu of the findings of the special master his own conclusions as follows:
'* * * That the equities of this cause are with the defendant and against the plaintiff; that in a case of this nature where the annulment of the marriage is sought and where, should the court decree annulment thereof, the result would be to declare illegitimate the issue of said marriage, the fact that there is issue is an important consideration, and no such decree should be entered with such unfortunate result, until the facts as shown by the record and the law make such a decree just and equitable; that the policy of the law is to uphold rather than annul, or dissolve, the marriage relation; that there is a presumption in favor of marriage and legitimacy of offspring; that where it is shown by the evidence that prior to the marriage of the parties there was a former marriage of one of the parties, where the present relation has been honestly entered into and not meretriciously, the law will presume that the former spouse is dead, or that there has been a divorce and a dissolution of such former matrimonial relation; that the burden of proof is upon the plaintiff, the party assailing the validity of the second marriage, to show its invalidity even to the extent of proving a negative; that the plaintiff and the defendant married, lived together as man and wife, and a child was begotten intending a lawful marriage and not a meretricious relationship; that the evidence of the plaintiff to show the invalidity of said second marriage, towit, the lack of knowledge of Alice McLaughlin, the sister of the former spouse of the defendant, as to any divorce of said former spouse and the certificate of his death in 1928, is insufficient to overcome the presumption of the validity of the second marriage and legitimacy of the offspring thereof, as to do so would permit a mere possible inference to overcome a presumption; that to constitute the fraud charged by plaintiff and erroneously found by the Special Master, the defendant must have known that her former husband was living and not divorced at the time of her second marriage, or must have been possessed of knowledge of facts sufficient to have put a person of ordinary and reasonable prudence upon notice of such facts, and with such knowledge, she must have, by word or act, represented to the plaintiff that she was competent to contract marriage, and plaintiff must have married her in reliance upon such representation and without knowledge, or rasonable means of knowledge, to the contrary; that, after a careful examination by the court of the evidence and giving to the Special Master's findings of fact the weight that would be given to the verdict of a petit jury, the Special Master erred in making his findings of fact upon which he based his finding of fraud of the defendant and that the marriage of the parties should be annulled; that the evidence of fraud is not clear nor convincing and is insufficient to sustain such a finding; that it would be unjust and inequitable under the evidence to permit the plaintiff who invoked the law to enter into the marriage relation and who received the fruits of such relation and thereafter begot a child as the result thereof to now invoke the law for the purpose of the annulment of such relation and thus render his child illegitimate; that the marriage of the parties herein is valid; that the exceptions of the parties as they are consistent with this decree should be sustained and as they are inconsistent therewith should be overruled; that the original and supplemental bills of complaint herein should be dismissed; that the defendant is entitled to the relief as prayed for in and by her prayer in her answers for affirmative relief and herein granted. * * *'
The evidence to sustain the special master's findings of fraud and deception practiced on the part of Augusta Jones in inducing said W. F. Jones to marry her in the belief that she was unmarried at the time, is so clear, certain, and convincing that no other conclusion can be reasonably reached concerning the same, except that the decision of the chancellor in refusing to accept and approve such findings was clearly wrong, and should not be followed by this court, even in view of the strong presumption always attaching here to a chancellor's findings arrived at on the basis of evidence that is somewhat in conflict. See Winton v. Stone, 107 Fla. 636, 145 So. 845, and cases cited therein.
The transcript concerning the present controversy reveals the unusual fact that the suit below was originally...
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