Scott v. Scott

• Decision Date: 22 June 1923
• Citation: 252 S.W. 1019,200 Ky. 153
• Parties: SCOTT v. SCOTT.
• Court: Kentucky Court of Appeals

252 S.W. 1019

200 Ky. 153

SCOTT v. SCOTT.

Court of Appeals of Kentucky.

June 22, 1923

Appeal from Circuit Court, Hart County.

Suit for divorce by Ira Belle Scott against M. O. Scott. Judgment for the plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Affirmed.

O'Rear Fowler & Wallace, of Frankfort, C. B. Larimore, of Munfordville, Sims, Rodes & Sims, of Bowling Green, and H. L James, of Elizabethtown, for appellant.

Watkins & Carden, of Munfordville, and S.E. Jones, of Glasgow, for appellee.

SAMPSON C.J.

While this is a divorce suit, the appellant insists that he was never married to appellee. She asserts that they were married in Nashville, Tenn., in January, 1911, and thereafter at intervals lived together as husband and wife until he finally abandoned her and declared he never had been married to her. Her grounds for divorce are cruel and inhuman treatment. If they were married as claimed by her, the evidence was sufficient to have warranted the chancellor in granting the divorce and in awarding alimony.

The principal, if not the only, question of importance in this case, is whether or not the parties were married? If they were not, then of course appellee has no right to divorce or to alimony, nor has she any cause of action against appellant.

As the marriage was consummated in the state of Tennessee, and the laws of that state are not proven, the presumption is that the English common law prevailed at the time in that commonwealth. At common law no ceremony was necessary to the validation of a marriage. All that was necessary was an agreement of the parties to accept each other as spouse and to carry the agreement into execution. This was done by both appellant and appellee in this case. But from the evidence in this case both parties acknowledged and declared that they were married to each other. The presumption to be drawn from such facts, when considered in the light of the law of this state, is that the marriage which they admit took place was ceremonial and regular in all respects.

We have examined the evidence in this case with great care, and while it is rather voluminous, some of it is very entertaining, especially the love letters written regularly by appellant to appellee through a period of many months. Part of the letters antedated appellant's election to the Senate, some were written while he was in the state Senate at Frankfort, and others after he retired from the Senate. Most of these billet doux were written in answer to those sent to him by appellee, and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he and appellee had entered into a marriage relation which must be presumed as we have said to have been ceremonial. He acknowledged their marriage over and over in his letters calling her "wife" and swearing his allegiance and undying love for her. These letters are so numerous that it would be extending this opinion beyond reasonable length to copy them or any considerable part of them, and for this reason, as well as for the further reason that they would serve no good purpose, we omit them. In most of these letters when referring to their marriage, or to their having been married, he was asking her to keep it a secret, and in order to induce her to do this he gave her many reasons, some of them plausible and others not so. He was afraid, so he told her in letters, that if their marriage became public it would destroy his political chances. At another time he said it would hurt him in business, and another that he could not close a land deal which he had on if it were made known, and yet another that he had a libel suit which he wanted tried out before the announcement of their wedding. She consented to keeping the marriage a secret for a time although she would constantly insist upon it being announced and made public. He went to see her very frequently, and stayed with her more or less. After she became pregnant, he sent her to Illinois, to stay with her sister and brother-in-law. While she was there, he went to see her one or more times. He told her sister and broth...