Scheffling v. Scheffling

• Decision Date: 24 October 1888
• Parties: SCHEFFLING v. SCHEFFLING.
• Court: New Jersey Court of Chancery

15 A. 577

44 N.J.E. 438

SCHEFFLING

v. SCHEFFLING.

Court of Chancery of New Jersey.

October 24, 1888.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

On final hearing on bill and answer.

M. T. Newbold, for complainant. Henry E. Wills and Gilbert Collins, for defendant.

VAN FLEET, V. C. This is a suit by a wife against her husband for divorce on the ground of adultery. The defendant has been twice married. He was divorced from his first wife in February, 1884, and married the complainant in May, 1885. He obtained a divorce from his first wife on a charge of adultery, and the complainant now asks to be divorced from him for the same cause. She charges him with having committed adultery in April, May, and June, 1886, with the woman from whom he had been divorced. There is no direct proof of adultery. The evidence on which the complainant relies consists entirely of proof of proximate acts; but there can be no doubt that if the acts were committed by the defendant and his alleged paramour, which the evidence of a single witness imputes to them, there is sufficient evidence of adultery to justify a decree of divorce. The decisive question of the case is, should the evidence of this witness be accepted as true, in view of the fact that it is flatly contradicted by the defendant and his alleged paramour, and is uncertain in point of time, and quite improbable in an important particular? The defendant's first wife is called Mary Smith in the bill, and has been referred to by that name in the evidence. The acts indicating adultery were committed, if they were committed at all, at the residence of Mary Smith's mother. At the time it is alleged they were committed, Mrs. Smith's family consisted of herself, her two daughters, Mary and Charlotte, her son Edward, and Charlotte Kamp. Charlotte Kamp is a niece of Mrs. Smith, and had lived in Mrs. Smith's family, as a servant, for five years prior to May, 1887. She is the witness who testifies to the proximate acts. She swears that the defendant, at one time, was in the habit of coming to Mrs. Smith's regularly twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday evenings; that he usually came about 8 o'clock, and remained until 10 or half past 10. She never saw him in the house, but she knew he was there, because, almost every time he came she saw him, from the basement window, ascend the steps to the front door. Mary always let him in. On the first floor above the basement of the house occupied by Mrs. Smith there are three rooms and a hall. The front room, at the time these visits are said to have been made, was used as a parlor. The next room had a bed in it, and was used by Mary, during the day, as a working room,—she supported herself by sewing,—and by her mother at night as a bedroom, and the third was Edward's bedroom. There were two entrances to the middle room,—one from the parlor by sliding doors, and the other from the hall by an ordinary door. The witness says that the defendant and Mary, on the occasion of his visits, always occupied the middle room; and that after they entered Mary locked the door leading from the hall. There was no lock on the sliding doors. It appears, however, that the only knowledge the witness had that any door was locked, or that Mary was the person who locked it, is that, being in the basement, she heard a noise up stairs which she supposed was made by turning the key in the hall-door lock. She never saw Mary or the defendant lock the door, nor did she ever attempt to open it, when she supposed Mary and the defendant were in the middle or rear room, and find she could not. She also says that on each occasion when the defendant visited Mary after he left she went to the rear bedroom, to put the bed in condition to be slept in; and that always when the defendant had been there she found the bed in the rear bedroom "mussed," but that she never found it so when he had not been there. She described what she meant by finding the bed "mussed," by saying that the bed was open; the bed clothes being thrown back. These are the proximate acts on which the complainant relies. If the defendant was Mary's visitor, and he and she were the persons who were locked in, and the persons who "mussed" the bed in the rear room, there can be no doubt of the defendant's guilt.

The wrongful act, on which the complainant's right to a divorce rests, is charged in her bill to have been committed in April, May, and June, 1886. Her bill was filed July 22, 1886. In such cases, the party seeking a dissolution of the marriage tie is required to state his or her case with such fullness and particularity that the defendant may know just what the charge is that he or she is called on to answer. The time when, and the place where, and the person, if known, with whom, the offense was committed, must be stated; but in laying the time it will be sufficient if the month and year are given, without...