Ridgely v. Ridgely

• Decision Date: 19 June 1894
• Parties: RIDGELY v. RIDGELY et al.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

29 A. 597

79 Md. 298

RIDGELY

v. RIDGELY et al.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

June 19, 1894.

Appeal from circuit court No. 2, of Baltimore city.

Action by Prank I. Ridgely against Char lotte Ridgely, alias Charlotte Hyatt, and Edward Hyatt. Prom a judgment for defendants, plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.

Argued before ROBINSON, C. J., and BRISCOE, BRYAN, PAGE, FOWLER, and McSHERRY, JJ.

Jos. P. Merryman and Thos. C. Weeks, for appellant. W. A Fisher and C. W. Field, for appellees.

McSHERRY, J. In October, 1881, Frank I. Ridgely married the appellee Charlotte, and they resided in Maryland continuously until October, 1892, when the said Charlotte left the state, without the consent of her husband, and went to South Dakota, where, in January following, she instituted proceedings against her husband for divorce, which culminated in a decree of divorce a vinculo on April 13, 1893. A few days thereafter she returned to Baltimore, and, in May following, she married the appellee Hyatt it is alleged in the bid of complaint filed by Frank I. Ridgely against his former wife, Charlotte, and her present husband, Hyatt, that she went to South Dakota for the purpose of procuring a divorce; that he was ignorant of her whereabouts during her absence; that she was without means of her own to defray her expenses, and that her conduct in this matter resulted from the influence of Hyatt, who fraudulently and illegally aided her in attempting to destroy the plaintiff's marital rights. The bill charges that the divorce procured in South Dakota is void, and prays that the so-called ceremony of marriage between Edward Hyatt and the said Charlotte Ridgely may be declared null and void." To this bill a demurrer was filed, and, upon a hearing thereof, circuit court No. 2 sustained the demurrer, and dismissed the bid. From that decree this appeal was taken.

The jurisdiction of a court of equity to pass a decree of the character prayed for, upon the application of a person not a party to the marriage alleged to be null and void, is directly presented. Treating, for the purposes of this discussion, the concessions of the demurrer as admitting the invalidity of the South Dakota divorce, how can a Maryland court of equity, at the instance of Mr. Ridgely, annul a subsequent marriage of his wife to another person, upon a bill filed exclusively for that purpose, and asking no other relief? That is the distinct question which this record brings before us for decision. If such a power be possessed by a court of equity, it must have been acquired either as a part of its original, inherent jurisdiction, or by statute. But, upon tracing the history of the English court of chancery prior to the American Revolution, no such power will be found to have been asserted or exercised by that tribunal. In point of fact, as early as the reign of Edward the Confessor the clergy assumed to decide all matters relating to marriage; but somewhat later the ecclesiastical courts took jurisdiction both in respect of annulments for canonical disabilites and dissolutions by limited divorces for super-advenient causes; and, acting on the ground that marriage was a sacrament, held it to be indissoluble. But, inasmuch as adultery was a flagrant breach of the marriage vow, it was soon found necessary to devise some means to punish the offending party, and to relieve the innocent one from the ties of a contract so incontestably violated. Accordingly, the ecclesiastical courts, but not the court of chancery, began to decree separations on the ground of adultery, such separations giving to the parties all the rights of celibacy, except that of contracting a new marriage. Gradually, the grounds of such separations were extended, and cruelty and some other causes were allowed as just and proper reasons to support them. Thus much having been conceded, men began to look forward to these separations with a View to the formation of other and more desirable ties. Apparently to meet this growing desire, but at all events contemporaneously with it, the ecclesiastical law expanded far beyond their original limits the degrees of consanguinity and affinity within which it was declared unlawful to contract marriage. "And not only was it held that relations of the blood to the sixth or seventh degree were incapable of contracting matrimony, but that, if either party to the marriage had been precontracted to another, the marriage was voidable; and eventually it was declared that if it happened to any man to have carnal connection with a woman, the same relations in regard to affinity were thereby created between them as if an actual marriage had taken place. Upon these grounds of precontract, affinity and carnal knowledge, the ecclesiastial law, still upholding the doctrine of the sacramental indissolubility of marriage, * * * and declaring such marriages to have been null and void ab initio, separated the parties 'pro salute animarum,' lest they should endanger their souls by living in a state of known sin." 2 Broom & H. Comm. side page 394. Thus matters stood until the Reformation, when the view of the reformers, including Cranmer, was that a more extended system of divorce should be allowed, and that a second marriage should be permitted after a divorce for adultery. A digest of ecclesiastical law, compiled under 3 & 4 Edw. VI. c. 11, having failed to receive the imprimatur of the law, by reason of the death of the king, there was no judicial authority in the realm which had jurisdiction to make such a decree as would enable a man or woman to marry again; and recourse was then had to the supreme power of the state,—the king, lords, and commons in parliament assembled,—to legislate upon the particular circumstances of each case. 2 Broom & H. Comm. side page 395. These applications to parliament became precedents, and after 1701 became more numerous. No steps, however, were taken to reduce the practice there to any form till 1798, when Lord Loughborough's Orders were adopted. These, with some modifications, continued to control the method of procedure until, in 1857, the court of divorce and matrimonial causes was created, by 20 & 21 Vict. c. 85. It will thus be seen from this rapid and imperfect sketch that from the very earliest times the jurisdiction to annul a marriage in England when void or voidable on account of pre-existing impediments, or to dissolve it for supervenient causes, was vested in other tribunals than the court of chancery (Shelf. Mar. & Div. side page 459); and consequently, when Maryland separated from the mother country, the Maryland court of chancery did not acquire from the English chancery any power over such cases, though in this state the courts of equity, independently of any statute, but in virtue of their general jurisdiction to vacate contracts procured by fraud, have exercised the power to annul a contract of marriage when the marriage was induced or procured by fraud or coercion. But of this later on. The sole jurisdiction in divorce and matrimonial causes being at the time of the Revolution vested in the ecclesiastical courts and in parliament, and no ecclesiastical court having been established in Maryland, the legislature, in 1777, passed an act (chapter 12) by the fifteenth section of which it was provided "that the general court may inquire into, bear, and determine, either on indictment or petition of either of the parties, the validity of any marriage, and may declare any marriage contrary to the table in this act, or any second marriage, the first subsisting, null and void. * * *" The legislature, in thus providing for judgments of nullity in certain instances, including both canonical and civil disabilities, did not confer jurisdiction upon the court of chancery in the premises, but upon the general court; and, when the latter court was abolished, this power was transferred, said Chancellor Bland in Fornshill v. Murray, 1 Bland, 483, to the county courts. Under the constitution of 1851 (article 4, § 11), the superior court of Baltimore city was given equity Jurisdiction in that city. When, therefore, the Code of 1860 was adopted, and the act of 1777 (chapter 12, § 15) was codified therein, it gave to the courts exercising equity jurisdiction at that time—viz. the superior court of Baltimore city and the circuit courts for the counties—the authority to decree the nullity of marriages for the causes set forth in the old act of 1777. The constitution of 1867 deprived the superior court of all equity jurisdiction, and conferred that jurisdiction exclusively upon the circuit court of Baltimore city. The organic and the statute law stood thus in February, 1881, when the case of Le Brun v. Le Brun, 55 Md. 496, was decided by this court. In that case it was said: "Suits for nullity of marriage have been very rare in this state, but the power of a court of equity to declare a marriage null and void, when a proper case is made out, cannot be questioned. The authority of the court, however, to act in such cases, is not derived from the powers conferred by the divorce laws. * * * If the marriage be procured by abduction,...