Reinhardt v. Reinhardt
| Decision Date | 16 December 1933 |
| Docket Number | 260-1933 |
| Citation | 169 A. 408,111 Pa.Super. 191 |
| Parties | Reinhardt, Appellant, v. Reinhardt |
| Court | Pennsylvania Superior Court |
Argued October 5, 1933
Appeal by libellant from decree of C. P. No. 3, Philadelphia County June T., 1929, No. 75, in the case of Joseph A. Reinhardt v Rose M. Reinhardt.
Libel for divorce. Before Ferguson, P. J.
The facts are stated in the opinion of the Superior Court.
The case was referred to Marcus M. Lyons, Esq., as Master, who recommended that a decree in divorce be granted. Subsequently, on exceptions to the master's report, the court, sustained the exceptions and dismissed the libel. Libellant appealed.
Error assigned, among others, was the decree of the court.
Affirmed.
A. Bernard Hirsch, of Hirsch and Salus, for appellant.
Frank Bechtel, Jr., and with him Andrew J. Schroder, 2d and Albert T. Hanby, for appellee.
Before Keller, Cunningham, Baldrige, Stadtfeld, Parker and James, JJ.
In the libel filed in this divorce case the respondent was charged with cruel and barbarous treatment, indignities to the person, and desertion. On hearing before a master, the libellant abandoned the first two charges and depended alone on desertion. The master having made a report recommending the granting of a divorce, the lower court sustained exceptions to that report and dismissed the libel.
Counsel for libellant contends that the conclusion and findings of the master should be accepted in preference to those of the lower court. While the findings of a master in a divorce proceeding are entitled to consideration by the court, "his findings have not the conclusiveness of those of an auditor or a master in chancery": Rommel v. Rommel, 87 Pa.Super. 511, 512. For a full discussion of this subject, also see the late cases of Nacrelli v. Nacrelli, 288 Pa. 1, 136 A. 228, affirming the decree (87 Pa.Super. 162) entered in that case by this court, and Langeland v. Langeland, 108 Pa.Super. 375, 164 A. 816. It is the duty not only of the lower court, but of this court, to consider all the evidence in the case and to determine independently whether the conclusion reached by the master is supported by such a preponderance of the evidence as the law requires.
The proper solution of the problem presented to us involves no new principles of law and does not require an extended discussion. After their marriage, the parties did not occupy a common abode as the libellant remained with his parents and the respondent continued to work. This arrangement was made as the respondent alleged, because the libellant was afraid to tell his parents, and that in spite of the fact that he was of full age and had been married before. Three children were born of this marriage when some marital disputes arose, provoked, we believe, by the attentions of the libellant to a woman about ten years younger than this husband and wife. About this time the respondent, with the three small children and with the acquiescence of her husband, as she alleged, moved to Blackwood, N. J., where the husband visited her twice a week but continued his principal residence with his parents in Philadelphia. On October 15, 1926, the husband on going to the home in Blackwood found that his wife and children were gone. This, he claims, was a wilful and malicious desertion. Two weeks later he located the family within a square of the former abode. As the learned judge of the lower court stated, "the efforts to find her were ludicrous." On his own admissions, he visited her at the new home and in December of the same year moved the...
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