Murry v. Murray

• Decision Date: 01 March 1926
• Citation: 150 N.E. 879,255 Mass. 19
• Parties: MURRY v. MURRAY.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

255 Mass. 19

150 N.E. 879

MURRY

v.MURRAY.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Essex.

March 1, 1926.

Appeal from Probate Court, Essex County; Alden P. White, Judge.

Petition by Clara A. Murray against Charles Murray for separate support. Decree for petitioner, and respondent appeals. Reversed and rendered.

Aaron Kobrin, of Lynn, for appellant.

Starr Parsons, Arthur G. Wadleigh, Patrick F. Crowley, and Eben Parsons, all of Lynn, for appellee.

SANDERSON, J.

This is a petition for separate support in which the petitioner alleges that her husband was ugly and disagreeable; that he left her in November, 1924, without just cause and has made no contributions to her support since that date. The court found that the petitioner was living apart from her husband for justifiable cause and made an order for her support. The evidence is not reported.

The court found that the parties had been married about thirty-two years, and trouble between them came to a head in the summer and fall of 1924; that the petitioner withdrew from cohabitation with her husband, locked herself in a separate room, withdrew from the savings bank a deposit of over $500 (started in 1908 in the husband's name with the right in the wife to draw it), and deposited the same in a new account in her own name; that he objected to their married children and to his wife's son by a former marriage living with them; that he went away and through his attorney notified his wife that he had a room in Charlestown and requested her to come and live with him. He testified that he was desirous of living with her. The specific findings upon which the court found the respondent guilty of such cruelty as to justify the wife in declining to accede to his request that she now come to live with him in his apartment were:

That ‘for some seven years before the separation the attitude of the husband toward his wife and family was wholly unreasonable. The word ‘grouch’ is often used colloquially in matters of this sort without much meaning or weight. In this case it expresses the chronic attitude and fixed habit of the husband. It was suggested in defense that he was by nature very taciturn. That does not excuse his conduct. A merely silent man may be the best sort of a husband and father. This man's refusal to have anything to say to his family was deliberately sullen and bitter to such an extent as now to cause a suspicion of mental defect. He says ‘his nerves were all gone,’ but no suggestion of irresponsibility was made in defense, and no finding to that effect is made.'

The court found that nothing in the wife's conduct justified his attitude toward her.

[1] Ordinarily the decision of the trial court based upon evidence not reported is conclusive, but in this case the decision is specifically based on the facts found, and the question is presented whether those facts justify the wife in living apart from her husband.

[2]...