Fonger v. Fonger

154 A. 443, 160 Md. 610, 1931 Md. LEXIS 113
CourtCourt of Appeals of Maryland
DecidedApril 24, 1931
Docket[No. 10, January Term, 1931.]
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 154 A. 443 (Fonger v. Fonger) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Maryland primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Fonger v. Fonger, 154 A. 443, 160 Md. 610, 1931 Md. LEXIS 113 (Md. 1931).

Opinions

*611 Offutt, J.,

delivered the opinion of the Court.

This is a proceeding instituted by the appellant, Edward R. F'onger, against his wife, Evelyn E. F'onger, the appellee, in the Circuit Court Ro. 2 of Baltimore City, to procure a decree divorcing him a vinculo matrimonii from the defendant on the ground of adultery. The appellee denied the alleged adultery and alleged that her husband had conspired to place her in “embarrassing or incriminating circumstances.” The case was tried upon those issues, and at the conclusion of the trial the court dismissed appellant’s bill. This appeal from that decree presents two questions, both of fact, one, whether the evidence proved the wife's guilt; second, if it did, whether the husband connived at the offense. A very careful examination of the record leaves no reasonable alternative but that of an affirmative finding on both issues.

The specific acts charged by the appellant occurred on the 22nd and 26th days of Rovember, 1929, in the Hotel Abbey in Baltimore. The circumstances upon which the appellee relied in support of her charge of connivance are inseparably connected with those incidents, and the evidence relating to both questions is so interwoven that its application will be clearer if they are considered together. Without setting it out in detail, it is sufficient to- say that the evidence establishes these facts:

The parties were married in Michigan in 1917, and lived for a time at Sparta and later at Grand Rapids, where Fonger was employed by a company engaged in the manufacture and sale of furniture. Two children were born of the marriage, of whom one, a boy, was nine years old when the suit was filed, and the other, a girl, was six years old at that time. The parties, except for a period during which the appellant was absent during the World War, lived together in Michigan until 1927, when the appellant came to- Baltimore to superintend the Baltimore branch of the fur7 niture company by which he was employed, leaving his wife and children on a farm near Grand Rap-ids, Mich. From that time he has seen his- wife at rare intervals, for compa *612 ratively short periods, and apparently never when he could avoid it.

The infidelities of which he complained are said to have occurred at the Hotel Abbey in Baltimore on the 22nd and 26th days of November, 1927, and, while the evidence as to them is clear and convincing; and requires little comment, to make manifest the appellant’s connection with them involves a more extended consideration of the record.

Prior to Fonger’s removal to Baltimore in 1927, he and his wife appear to- have lived together simply, peacefully, and, as far as the record discloses, happily. They were plain people, and their interests appear to have been confined to the little farm on which they lived and to Fonger’s work. When F'onger came to Baltimore in 1927, the current of their lives was abruptly diverted into new channels. Mrs. Fonger remained on the farm, where for a time she did much of the manual labor, fed some twenty-five pigs, milked the cows, helped to harvest the crops, and did whatever else was needed to- carry it on. With his removal to- Baltimore, Fonger’s material fortunes had brightened. He was receiving what was to persons in their station a large income, living, free from family cares, easily and comfortably in hotels and apartments, and had learned to- pursue pleasure, even to the extent of dissipation, with some zest. Indeed so far did he progress that he was asked to leave a respectable boarding house because his parties were so boisterous and doubtful that they offended his fellow lodgers. His relations with other women became friendly, easy, and genial, and he came to regard not only with complacence- but admiration such modem improvements in manners and morals as smoking and the consumption of “gin mixed with orange juice” by the women who moved through his new life. Taken altogether, he found life in Baltimore pleasanter than on the dreary Michigan farm with the wife of his youth, whose work as a household and farm drudge had left her little of the grace and the charm which he saw in the women with whom he associated in his new and delightful surroundings. And one of the consequences of his changed environment was that he *613 came to compare his wife unfavorably with these acquaintances, and such affection as he had for her was replaced by distaste and finally by positive dislike. The difference in their lives was of course apparent to her, for from time to time, with little encouragement from him, she visited him and attempted to share his improved fortunes Her visits were never invited, usually unexpected, rarely welcome, and, when she finally came to stay in November, 1927, he was not only aghast, hut enraged. She did not fit into the life he was leading; he did not want her; he constantly manifested his disliko for her; and his obvious and unconcealed wish was to be rid of her. He spoke in his testimony of having doubted her chastity, but, except for certain wholly inadmissible hearsay testimony of suspicions quality, there was not the slightest evidence to justify the doubt.

Shortly after Fonger came to Baltimore in July, 1927, his wife drove to that city with an uncle, who was driving across the continent from his home in the West, and stayed at Idlehigh with her husband about three weeks. Except that he gave her the impression that he was ashamed of her because she did not smoke, Fonger’s treatment of her on the occasion of that visit appears to have been kind, and, when she left to return to Michigan, they were on friendly terms. In the autumn of 1927 her health became impaired, she says, as a result of her work on the farm, and in December of that year she returned with their children to Baltimore, and stayed with hex husband in an apartment until February 15th, 1928. On that visit he neglected her, did not think she should have come, gave her the impression he was ashamed of her, and said she was nothing but a farmer, unsophisticated, did not smoke, urged her to go West for her health, and on February 15th of that year she again left Baltimore. In the following May, to recuperate her health, she went with her children to visit relatives in the far West, and returned from that visit in July, 1928. Although during her absence she expressed in letters her desire to return, her husband assured her that he did not need her and urged her to stay, and, although she had wired him to meet her or *614 write her, when she did return to her home he neither met her nor wrote her, but did send an unsigned telegram accompanying a money order, in which he said: “Please find enclosed $50.” Three days after her arrival he telegraphed her that he would be home the following week, but, to quote the witness, “he kept putting her off,” until she wrote that she was either “coming to Baltimore or going back out West,” and then he came home, and that appears to have been his only visit to his wife and family. Throughout that visit, the appellee testified, he was cold, overbearing, seemed to be ashamed of her, “suspicious and nasty minded,” went through her trunks, and at times hardly spoke to her. She was anxious about her future, and demanded that he tell her whether she and her children were to come to Baltimore, and finally he told her that he would return on the 10th of September and take her and the children to Baltimore.

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Bluebook (online)
154 A. 443, 160 Md. 610, 1931 Md. LEXIS 113, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/fonger-v-fonger-md-1931.