Steinbrugge v. Steinbrugge., A-199.

• Decision Date: 18 April 1949
• Docket Number: No. A-199.,A-199.
• Parties: STEINBRUGGE v. STEINBRUGGE.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

65 A.2d 606

STEINBRUGGE
v.
STEINBRUGGE.

No. A-199.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

April 18, 1949.

Appeal from former Court of Chancery.

Suit by John B. Steinbrugge against E. Donald Steinbrugge for divorce. From a decree nisi in divorce, defendant appeals.

Reversed.

65 A.2d 607

Max M. Albach and Ruback & Albach, all of Newark, for appellant.

Harry Kalisch and Kalisch & Kalisch, all of Newark, for respondent.

HEHER, Justice.

The appeal is from a decree nisi in divorce awarded to the wife for extreme cruelty under R.S. 2:50-2, N.J.S.A.

We find that the proofs do not sustain the decree.

The marriage was celebrated on June 11, 1941, following an elopement. Petitioner had completed her first year at college; and defendant was pursuing the study of the law. There was no announcement of the marriage until August following. Petitioner was then at home with her mother in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In the ensuing October, petitioner joined her husband in Summit, New Jersey, and there they resided together in a temporary abode for a month or two, and thereafter in a three-room apartment on Woodland Avenue until March 7, 1947, when petitioner left her husband and with their only child, then not quite three years of age, went to Florida, where they remained three months. The petition for divorce was filed on November 14th of that year, shortly after the expiration of the statutory period.

The separation was against the will of the husband. Petitioner said: ‘I told him his treatment of me had been intolerable, I couldn't stand it any longer; that he had killed every bit of love and respect I ever had for him by his treatment of me, and I refused to stay any longer.’ She spurned her husband's efforts to terminate the separation. At a conference with her husband and their respective counsel, she again repulsed all endeavors to effect a reconciliation, assigning as reasons that she was no longer in love with her husband because he was ‘terrible’ and ‘awful hard to get along with,’ and he had ‘tricked her into having the child.’ She was intent on a divorce. She admitted on the witness stand that she ‘resented’ the birth of the child. Her husband ‘tricked’ her, she said.

We are convinced that petitioner's separation from her husband was motivated by considerations which in the view of the law do not constitute extreme cruelty. Six specific acts of cruelty are alleged: the first in the Fall of 1942; the last in November 1946. Meanwhile they maintained their social contacts as if nothing...