Maddox v. Maddox

• Decision Date: 19 May 1938
• Docket Number: 27.
• Citation: 199 A. 507,174 Md. 470
• Parties: MADDOX et al. v. MADDOX. [*]
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

199 A. 507

174 Md. 470

MADDOX et al. v. MADDOX. ^[*]

No. 27.

Court of Appeals of Maryland

May 19, 1938

Appeal from Circuit Court No. 2 of Baltimore City; Samuel K. Dennis Judge.

Petition by Natalie Maddox against Robert Maddox and Mrs. Ida Maddox to have Ida Maddox held in contempt of court and to have two children placed in an institution for children. From a decree placing the children in an institution, respondents appeal.

Reversed and remanded.

Sol C Berenholtz, of Baltimore, for appellants.

J Calvin Carney, of Baltimore, for appellee.

Argued before BOND, C.J., and URNER, OFFUTT, PARKE, SLOAN, MITCHELL, SHEHAN, and JOHNSON, JJ.

PARKE Judge.

On September 18, 1933, Natalie Maddox filed in the Circuit Court No. 2 of Baltimore City a bill for permanent alimony against her husband, Robert Maddox. She charged her husband with cruelty, desertion and adultery. The wife asked to be awarded the custody of their two girl children, then six and two years of age. The husband answered the bill of complaint and denied the facts upon which the wife based her equity to alimony and the custody of the two infants. He asserted his wife was morally unfit to have the custody of the children. The answer of the husband was accompanied by his cross-bill for a divorce a vinculo matrimonii. The parties took testimony in support of their respective bills of complaint. The Chancellor on December 4, 1933, dismissed both bills of complaint; and awarded the custody of the two infant children to their paternal grandmother, with leave to the mother to see the children at all reasonable times. In dismissing both bills of complaint, the Court retained jurisdiction of the custody of the two infants.

On May 14, 1934, the mother of the infants filed a petition for the purpose of obtaining the custody and care of the infants. The father answered and again asserted that she was unfit. After testimony and hearing, the petition of the mother was denied by the Chancellor. The mother renewed this application on September 30, 1936. The petition was answered separately by the father and grandmother, who resisted the application on the alleged ground that the children had a suitable home and that the mother was not a proper person to have the infants. Again, testimony was taken by the litigants, and, after hearing, the mother was a second time refused the care and custody of the children, and that of the grandmother continued, but the decree of the Court was modified so as to permit the mother to have the infants every Sunday and Wednesday for designated periods, but it was provided that the children were not to be taken by the mother out of the City of Baltimore without the specific written authority of the Court. The decree was passed on March 29, 1937; and, on the following April 21 the mother reported to the Chancellor that the grandmother had refused to let her have the children as commanded and prayed that she be adjudged in contempt. The answer of the grandmother was promptly made. It denied the accusations. The Court did not act on these proceedings until November 22, 1937, when the parties, with their counsel, appeared before the Chancellor, who, after hearing statements of counsel for the parties in behalf of their respective clients and examining the record, which disclosed the frequency of the hearings caused by the controversies between the parties with reference to the children, announced from the bench that the order of March 29, 1937, with respect to the mother's right to have the children must be obeyed in good faith by the grandmother between the hours on the days named; and that, if the order were not obeyed by the grandmother, he would end her custody of the children. The Chancellor then suspended the hearing for further developments.

On December 1st, the mother filed a petition in the cause in which she represented that on Wednesday, November 24th, and again on Sunday, November 28th, she had called at the home of the grandmother to get the temporary custody of her children as provided by the order of March 29, 1937, but that the grandmother had deliberately failed, and refused, to let her have the children. For the alleged disobedience of the Court's order, the mother prayed that the grandmother be adjudged in contempt, and that the children be placed in a home where they will be free of 'the improper and unfavorable influence of Ida Maddox', the grandmother, or that their custody be awarded to the mother and that the father be charged with their support and maintenance. The Chancellor passed an order requiring the grandmother to show cause why she should not be adjudged in contempt. The answer denied the charges upon which the alleged contempt was based; and set up in detail the circumstances of the visits of the mother from the standpoint of the respondent. If believed, the facts of the answer constituted a complete exoneration of the grandmother. The issues of fact thus raised were later the occasion of the taking of testimony in open court before the Chancellor. At this hearing on December 3, 1937, the parties were permitted to offer witnesses in support of their respective contentions. The testimony showed that both on the first Wednesday and Sunday following the adjourned hearing before the Chancellor, but not on the second Wednesday, the mother went with a woman friend to the home of the grandmother, and left on both occasions without the two children. According to the mother's own testimony, the grandmother told the children they were not obliged to go and so frightened the children with alarming assertions of what the mother would do to them, that they were afraid to go away with the mother. She, also, stated circumstances which tended to establish that the grandmother had prevented the children from going. The woman, who accompanied the mother, was a witness, and failed in important particulars to support the testimony of the mother. The effect of the testimony of this witness is that the children were there and had been prepared to go, but were themselves unwilling, and that, while the grandmother did nothing to prevent the children from going, she did not urge them to accompany the mother. On the other hand, the testimony of the grandmother is that she got the children ready to go with their mother, and urged them to go, but the children refused. Her testimony is sharply in conflict with that of the mother, but does not gravely differ from that of the witness who was with the mother on the occasion of her last two visits. In addition, the testimony of the grandmother is corroborated by other witnesses, whose testimony, however, was confined, by reason of their limited knowledge, to certain aspects of the case.

The two girls are about eleven and seven years of age, and their insubordinate refusal to go with their mother was due, in the opinion of the Chancellor, to a failure on the part of the father and grandmother loyally to conform to the Court's order by exerting their authority properly and sufficiently in...