Ragan v. Ragan
| Decision Date | 11 July 1958 |
| Docket Number | No. 7727,7727 |
| Citation | 315 S.W.2d 142 |
| Parties | Agnes Vernie RAGAN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Elmer Lee RAGAN, Defendant-Respondent. |
| Court | Missouri Court of Appeals |
Hayden C. Covington, Brooklyn, N.Y., for plaintiff-appellant.
John Hosmer, Haymes, Dickey & Dickey, Springfield, for defendant-respondent.
In this divorce suit instituted by plaintiff, Agnes Vernie Ragan, the trial court entered a decree dismissing plaintiff's petition, granting a divorce to defendant, Elmer Lee Ragan, on his cross-bill, and awarding to defendant the care and custody of two minor children born of the marriage, to-wit, Sherry Jane, eight years old at the time of trial, and Robert Keith, then five years old, with reasonable visitation rights to plaintiff. On this appeal by plaintiff, the sole point properly preserved and presented for appellate review under Supreme Court Rule 1.08 1 is that the trial court abused its discretion in awarding custody of the minor children to defendant.
Plaintiff and defendant (whose ages are not shown) were married in 1931 at Marlow, Oklahoma. In addition to the two young children whose custody is in controversy, the parties have two older sons, Elmer Lee, Jr., twenty-three years of age at the time of trial, who is married and lives in Springfield, Missouri, and Don, nineteen years of age, who resides with defendant at Fordland, Missouri. Defendant had "worked in the optical business" in Oklahoma and Texas from 1931 to 1946, and then had been on a farm for a brief period, before the Ragan family moved in 1948 to Fordland, a country community about twenty-five miles east of Springfield, Missouri. Since moving to Fordland, defendant has owned and operated a grocery and feed store. The family living room, dining room and kitchen are in the rear end of the ground floor of the store building, while the bedrooms are on the second floor of the same building.
In October, 1955, plaintiff became a member of a religious sect known as Jehovah's Witnesses (hereinafter referred to as the Witnesses). In May, 1956, she left her husband and children and thereafter remained separate and apart from them until October 25, 1956, when the family was reunited under circumstances shortly to be noted. During this period of separation, plaintiff engaged in the Witnesses' "activities" such as "missionary work" and "placing literature," but she found time to pursue two suits for separate maintenance against defendant. When the second such suit came on for trial on October 25, 1956, the circuit judge, distressed by the tragedy unfolding before him, patiently talked with the parties in his chambers, persuasively urged them to reunite "for the sake of the children," and hopefully effected what we shall refer to as a reconciliation. At that time, the parties entered into an informal "agreement" that (as paraphrased by plaintiff in its simplest terms) "I was to take care of the home and the children, and he (defendant) was to take care of the business." According to plaintiff, the specific provision that (as she put it) "I was to have no part in the business" was prompted by her complaint about working long hours in the store; but, defendant said that he insisted upon this provision because of plaintiff's secret and unauthorized abstractions of cash from the store--"I couldn't trust her in the store no more." Plaintiff was to have "time out" to attend two meetings of the Witnesses each week, to-wit, a one-hour meeting for "Bible study" each Tuesday evening at a farm home two miles from Fordland, and a two-hour meeting each Sunday evening at Kingdom Hall in Springfield, but was not to participate otherwise in the Witnesses' "activities," which (so defendant charged) theretofore had caused plaintiff to neglect and abandon both her husband and their children.
However, the reconciliation was short-lived, indeed; and, within two or three weeks, tempers flared and trouble erupted again, by reason of plaintiff's alleged failure to respect the requirement of the informal reconciliation "agreement" that she "go directly from * home to the meetings" of the Witnesses and "return * * home immediately after the meetings." Defendant testified that "she (plaintiff) failed to get home until in the neighborhood of 11:00 o'clock" several nights. On an evening in November, 1956, defendant said that he "waited up" until 10:30 P.M., "went on to bed," heard no knock or telephone call, and did not see plaintiff until she returned home the following morning with the curt comment that "I would have been at home if you would have let me in" but with no explanation of where she had spent the night. Plaintiff's version of the incident was that she had "returned a little after ten," that there had been no response to her knocks on the locked door or to her call from the nearby telephone exchange, and that accordingly she had sought lodging for the night with neighbors of the same religious faith.
Summarized without unimportant detail, defendant's testimony was that, during the period from the reconciliation on October 25, 1956, to the final separation on January 20, 1957, plaintiff's mind was so occupied and her time was so consumed with the reading of religious literature and her religious activities that she failed to dress and feed the children properly, frequently left them "just running wild around the store"--"just doing whatever they wanted to do," and was so unconcerned about them that she "many a time" answered defendant's inquiries about the children with "I don't know--go see about them"; that she would not engage in conversation "without * running * right into religion" and attempting to answer every question "with scripture"; that she spoke disparagingly of "anyone by the name of Ragan" in general and of defendant in particular, because, not being Witnesses, they were "no ways near the same type and kind of people" but were "an altogether different class or breed"; that she told the children that, "if they listened to me (defendant), it was wrong and * * a lie"; and that, in short, she was "very cold and indifferent"--"a long ways from a wife" to defendant and not "motherly with the children."
The final separation followed an altercation on the night of Sunday, January 20, 1957, after plaintiff had returned from Springfield "around 10:30 or a little after." According to defendant, he was upstairs, "putting the kiddies to bed," when plaintiff knocked on the downstairs door. While he finished with the children, plaintiff "was apparently trying to kick the door down or beat it down." As he opened the door, defendant asked plaintiff "if she was in that big of a hurry why didn't she get home a little earlier, and she took a swing at my (defendant's) head with her purse." After both parties went upstairs, defendant went to bed immediately, but plaintiff "sat around" for five or ten minutes before walking to the foot of defendant's bed, where she "looked at me (defendant) good and hard a little while and said, 'you dirty s-- o- a b----.' " When defendant "got up and * * walked around to where she was at, she picked up the telephone * * * and jammed the telephone right at me." "I (defendant) pushed it right back * * * and she fell across the bed." Vigorously denying that he had beaten, struck or slapped plaintiff at any time, defendant said that, when plaintiff fell on the bed, the base of the telephone "fell out of her own hand" and struck her face causing the bruises and abrasions subsequently observed by witnesses. Defendant testified that plaintiff jerked the cord out of the telephone, "kicked and cried and hollered and acted like a five-year old kid for a while" (with all of the children, by then assembled, watching her), "slid off the bed into the floor * * * and set there a little bit, * * * took a look in the mirror, and said, 'this is good enough,' " and then left. Don (the nineteen-year old son) confirmed defendant's narrative in all material particulars. Plaintiff's version was that she reached home about 10:05 P.M. only "a few minutes late"; that, after some words about the time, "I shook my purse at him, and told him to let me in," whereupon defendant "come out and struck me, with my glasses on, and pushed me on upstairs into the bedroom"; that, in the bedroom, defendant "started in again" and struck plaintiff "with his fists," so she "ran to the telephone * to try to get some help, and all the time he kept beating me, and trying to take the 'phone away from me"; and that, "after this was over," plaintiff told defendant that she "was going to report him for it," got her things, and left.
Defendant stated that plaintiff "has a very high temper." Don testified that his mother "was always abusive" toward his father and "was always in a mad state of condition." And, two neighbor women related separate conversations with plaintiff in which she had said that "when she (plaintiff) got mad there wasn't nothing she wouldn't say or do." According to defendant, plaintiff "would hardly ever just talk" to one of the children--"she would slap them, kick them, * or something first, and then tell them what she wanted." Both defendant and Don described an illustrative incident involving Robert Keith, the five-year old child. In defendant's language, "little Bobby set a water pitcher at the table, and didn't set it on there good, and it fell off, and she just screamed and said, 'you little devil,' and kicked him and cried and so forth for about an hour * * or more * * and slapped him a time or two because the kid made a mistake." In describing his mother's reaction to the broken pitcher, Don said that she "had a sort of a screaming fit, and kicked him (Bobby), and * went into a mad rage." Witness Heying, who worked at the Ragan store, testified that he had seen plaintiff "kick the children in the stomach, in the back"--"almost anyplace, it didn't make much difference, I don't think." Commenting that "I wouldn't...
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