Shaw v. Shaw

• Decision Date: 02 August 1971
• Docket Number: No. 19264,19264
• Citation: 182 S.E.2d 865,256 S.C. 453
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: Richard E. SHAW, Respondent, v. Ida Ann D. SHAW, Appellant.

Page 865

182 S.E.2d 865

256 S.C. 453

Richard E. SHAW, Respondent, v. Ida Ann D. SHAW, Appellant.

No. 19264.

Supreme Court of South Carolina.

Aug. 2, 1971.

J. D. Todd, Jr., of Leatherwood, Walker, Todd & Mann, Greenville, for appellant.

C. Ben Bowen, of Abrams, Bowen & Townes, Greenville, for respondent.

BUSSEY, Justice:

This is a divorce action in which the husband has been granted divorced by the lower court, at least in effect on the ground of insanity although ostensibly on another ground. The wife, represented by a guardian ad litem and appointed counsel, appeals. The parties have been married since July, 1945, and have three children, ranging from nine to twenty-four years of age at the time of the hearing in 1970. The separation of the parties commenced when, on June 1, 1964, the wife was confined to the South Carolina State Hospital where she still remains as a patient.

The divorce action commenced in 1969 was predicated upon Code Section 20--101(5) of the Code of Laws of South Carolina for 1962 as amended in 1969, it being alleged that the parties had been continuously separated for a period of 'at least three years' prior to the commencement of the action. In 1969 Article XVII, Sec. 3 of the Constitution was amended by inserting an additional ground for divorce, as follows: 'continuous separation for a period of at least three years * * *', and if the husband has a ground for divorce, it is by virtue of this constitutional provision. The Constitution is a limitation upon the power of the legislature to allow divorce upon any ground other than those enumerated therein. Nolletti v. Nolletti, 243 S.C. 20, 132 S.E.2d 11.

South Carolina is the only state in the Union which deals with divorce in its constitution and for most of its history divorces from the bonds of matrimony have not been allowed. The history of divorce in this state and the strong public policy of this state relating to the fostering and protection of marriage are both discussed at some length in the decision of this Court in Brown v. Brown, 215 S.C. 502, 56 S.E.2d 330. In construing a constitutional amendment a primary object of the court is to determine the intention of those who proposed it and of the people who adopted it. Mungo v. Shedd, 247 S.C. 195, 146 S.E.2d 617; Miller v. Farr, 243 S.C. 342, 133 S.E.2d 838.

The pivotal question, then, before us is simply whether or not those who proposed and adopted the amendment intended that a separation brought about by the insanity of one of the parties would constitute a ground for divorce. The lower court reasoned that there was no intention to distinguish or except a separation caused by mental incompetence since it would have been a very simple matter to so state if an exception was intended. The converse of this proposition is that the failure to recognize a distinction is tantamount to reading into the constitutional provision an intent to make mental incompetency or insanity a ground for divorce.

The Supreme Court of Virginia in the case of Crittenden v. Crittenden, 210 Va. 76, 168 S.E.2d 115, was confronted with an identical question under its divorce statute. The logic of that opinion is, we think, irrefutable and we quote therefrom as follows:

'It is likewise true, as the complainant argues, that the statute in question does not qualify the separation there contemplated by use of the words 'voluntary' or 'mutual'. And the statute does not contain any exception applying to a situation where separation results from the commitment of one of the parties for mental incompetence.

'But that does not mean that it was the...