Vordick v. Vordick
| Decision Date | 02 March 1920 |
| Citation | 219 S.W. 591,281 Mo. 279 |
| Parties | ALINDA H. VORDICK, Appellant, v. AUGUST H. VORDICK, Deceased; WILLIAM H. HAUSHULTE, Executor of Will of AUGUST H. VORDICK |
| Court | Missouri Supreme Court |
Appeal from St. Louis County Circuit Court. -- Hon. G. A. Wurdeman Judge.
Transferred to St. Louis Court of Appeals.
Homer Hall for appellant.
Muench Walther & Muench for respondent.
RAGLAND C. Brown and Small, CC., concur.
This action was begun April 3, 1914, in the Circuit Court for St. Louis County, by Alinda B. Vordick against August H. Vordick for divorce and alimony. Plaintiff and defendant were married September 11, 1913, and separated March 7, 1916. At the time of their marriage plaintiff was a widow, about fifty years of age, and resided at Troy, New York, where she had a married daughter living; the defendant was a widower, about sixty-five years of age, having also a married daughter, and resided in the City of St. Louis. They first met on a cruise through the Orient in the spring of 1912. On their return to their respective homes a correspondence ensued, resulting in their marriage. Soon after their marriage defendant purchased a home in an attractive residence district in University City, St. Louis County, paying therefor $ 12,500. It contained eleven rooms and was a two and a half story structure. There they began housekeeping. They kept no servants, but plaintiff with some assistance from defendant did all of the housework, including the cooking, washing, ironing, etc. Except for recreation trips they lived there continuously until their separation. They spent four weeks in Michigan in July, 1914, and about two months in California in the summer of 1915. When they were at home she never went anywhere except to church and to meetings of certain of its auxiliary societies. Their brief life together was tempestuous from the beginning. From the first the defendant indulged in violent outbursts of temper, during which he applied offensive epithets to plaintiff and not infrequently struck her. Immediately after these explosions the domestic atmosphere invariably cleared, the defendant asked forgiveness, which was apparently freely granted, and periods of unalloyed felicity followed. Defendant's violent exhibitions of passion were occasioned by his jealousy, produced no doubt by a disordered imagination, and as time went on they recurred with more frequency. At first the plaintiff was the passive recipient of his violence, later she defended herself with a right good will, and in the last encounter it cannot be said that she got the worst of it. While she carried a "black eye" for a week or more, his spectacles were broken, his "whole left side scratched up" and he was laid up in bed where he "suffered all night for two or three days." As a result of this pitched battle plaintiff left and went to a hotel, but, as fierce as it was, her affection for defendant, apparently, was not appreciably lessened thereby, for a day or two afterward she stole unobtrusively into their home and pinned a note to his pillow, containing this brief message, "I love you." On finding this he went in pursuit. An interview followed, at which she gently insinuated that he should settle on her some of his property as a peace offering. This he could not abide, and the breach became final.
The evidence most favorable to plaintiff's contention tends to show that at the time of the trial the defendant owned the following property: Notes and securities, bearing six per cent annual interest, to the amount of $ 30,000; a forty-six acre tract of land two miles west of Clayton in St. Louis County, of the estimated value of $ 38,800; a fifty-acre tract on the Bellefontaine Road north of the City of St. Louis, of the estimated value of $ 12,500; and two lots in an outlying industrial district of the City of St. Louis, of a value estimated at from $ 30,000 to $ 40,000. All of this real estate was unimproved and the values put on it by witnesses were concededly speculative. Parts of one or more of the larger tracts were rented to gardeners and yielded an annual rental of from five hundred to six hundred dollars. The rents received from the remainder were nominal. In addition to the property just mentioned, there was the residence which the defendant purchased for $ 12,500, and which appellant in her brief tacitly admits he caused to be conveyed to her and himself jointly, thereby creating in them an estate by the entirety. The evidence also discloses inferentially that the plaintiff at the time of her marriage to defendant was, and at the time of the trial continued to be, possessed of some means, the extent of which, however, even approximately, is not suggested. The defendant was a physician, but had retired from active practice, only occasionally treating an old patient. His income from this source must have been meagre.
The petition as ground for divorce sets out with particularity indignities of the character hereinbefore indicated. It also alleges that the defendant is seized and possessed of real and personal property and money of the value of $ 250,000 and that the plaintiff is without adequate means of support and for the prosecution of this suit. The prayer is for divorce and "that the court will adjudge to her such alimony, support and maintenance out of the property of the defendant as under the nature of the case and the circumstances of the parties may be right and proper." The answer admitted the marriage, denied the other allegations of the petition and set up counter indignities.
The court found the issues for plaintiff and that she was the innocent and injured party and granted her a divorce. It also adjudged that as and for alimony in gross she recover the sum of $ 9,000, on the condition that within twenty days thereafter she relinquish her inchoate dower in defendant's real estate, and that failing so to do she recover the sum of $ 5,000. She declined to relinquish her inchoate dower so that the judgment for alimony in gross is for the sum of $ 5,000.
Plaintiff filed a motion for a new trial on the grounds, among others, that the alimony and attorney's fee are "wholly inadequate and much less than the plaintiff is entitled to under the law and the evidence," and that the judgment ought to be for an amount sufficient to give plaintiff a net income which would provide for her support and maintenance in accordance with the station in life of plaintiff and defendant. The motion was overruled, and an appeal from the judgment awarding alimony and attorney's fees was granted to this court. Pending this appeal the defendant has died and the cause has been revived in the name of his executor.
The principal assignment of error is that "the court erred in awarding to plaintiff an inadequate and insufficient amount as alimony in gross and for attorney's fees."
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