Owens v. Owens

• Decision Date: 31 May 1888
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: Owens v. Owens et al.

6 S.E. 794

(100 N.C. 240)

Owens

v.Owens et al.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

May 31, 1888.

Dower—How Divested—Crime.

A wife who has been convicted and imprisoned for life for being an accessory to the murder of her husband is not thereby barred of her right of dower.

Appeal from superior court, Washington county; Graves, Judge.

Action for dower by Sarah Owens against Owens and others. Plaintiff demurred to defendant's answer, and the demurrer was overruled. Plaintiff appeals.

T. N. Hill, J. H. Moore, and S. B. Spruill, for appellant.

C. L. Pettigrew and A. W. Haywood, for appellees.

Smith, C. J. This special proceeding, instituted in the superior court before the clerk on July 11, 1887, by the plaintiff, the widow of A. D. Owens, who died by an act of violence, intestate, in the month of September in the year preceding, against the defendants, his infant children and heirs at law, to have her dower assigned in the lot whereon he resided. The defendants, not disputing the general allegations contained in the petition, deny the plaintiff's right to dower in the lot; for that at fall term, 1886, of the superior court of Beaufort, on the trial she had been convicted of being an accessory before the fact to the murder of the deceased, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life in the state prison, wherein, in pursuance of said judgment, she is still confined. The plaintiff entered a demurrer to the answer, which upon the hearing before the clerk, was adjudged to be insufficient, and the application denied. Upon her appeal to the judge, he affirmed the judgment of the clerk, overruling the demurrer, and from this an appeal is taken to this court, in which is brought up the question whether the petitioner, by her criminal act in participating in the murder of her husband, has thereby deprived herself of the right to have dower allotted to her under the law, in the estate of which he was seized, and which has descended to his heirs at law. The natural feeling inspired by her proved co-operation in the unnatural and wicked act of taking her husband's life, and thus availing herself of the generous provision of the law that secures her, surviving, a home for life, is repugnant to a claim preferred under such circumstances of perfidy to the marital relation. In the absence of authority, the well-instructed and able judge who tried the cause ruled against the allowance of dower, as it would in fact be "to reward crime" by conferring benefits that result from and are procured by its commission. We feel ourselves unable to concur in this conclusion, for the reason that while the...