Orr v. Orr

7 Pa. D. & C.2d 375, 1956 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 207
CourtPennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Mercer County
DecidedMarch 16, 1956
Docketno. 240
StatusPublished

This text of 7 Pa. D. & C.2d 375 (Orr v. Orr) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Mercer County primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Orr v. Orr, 7 Pa. D. & C.2d 375, 1956 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 207 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1956).

Opinion

McKay, J.,

This case is before the court on exceptions by defendant to the report of a master in divorce. The master recommends' the granting of a decree of divorce a vinculo matrimonii to plaintiff on the ground of indignities to the person, committed by the wife.

The parties were married July 3, 1942, in Macon, Georgia, while plaintiff was in the military service. Since his discharge on September 18, 1945, and until their separation in 1953, they have lived in the Borough of Grove City, Mercer County, where he has been employed as an X-ray technician at the Bashline-Rossman Hospital. One child, Eddie Jo, was born in 1948. In late June or early July of 1953, the parties sold their house and five acres of land near Grove City, and most of their personal property, and plaintiff assisted his wife in moving the rest of it to Kane, in McKean County. Thereafter, he visited her on several weekends, during which times they lived together in her apartment in Kane as husband and wife. He retained his position in Grove City where he lived in a rooming house.

In August, 1953, on one of his visits to Kane, he asked his wife for a divorce, and later presented her with separation papers which she refused to sign.

In April, 1954, plaintiff went to Reno, Nevada, where, on May 17, 1954, he instituted a proceeding for divorce. In the complaint he set forth that for “more than six weeks last past and immediately preceding the commencement of this action, he had been and still is an actual and bona fide resident of the county of Clark, State of Nevada.”

Defendant contested the Nevada divorce proceeding, whereupon plaintiff discontinued it and returned to Grove City on June 24, 1954.

On November 23, 1954, the wife instituted a proceeding for divorce a mensa et thoro in the court of [377]*377common pleas of McKean County, at no. 137 December term, 1954, alleging that her husband committed indignities to her person and had maliciously turned her out of doors. The charge of indignities was not pressed. The husband contested the proceeding. On August 17, 1955, the court found that the husband had maliciously turned his wife out of doors and granted the wife a divorce from the bed and board of her husband, and allowed Mrs. Orr the sum of $100 per month alimony.

On January 3, 1955, plaintiff filed a complaint in the present action, alleging that he had been a Pennsylvania resident for more than one year.

The exceptions raise three questions:

1. In view of plaintiff’s Nevada divorce proceedings and the averments as to residence contained in the complaint in that ease, was plaintiff husband a bona fide resident of Pennsylvania for at least one year prior to the filing of his complaint in divorce in the present case?

2. Does the McKean county decree of divorce from bed and board preclude plaintiff from bringing an action for and obtaining an absolute divorce in the present proceeding by the application of the doctrine of res judicata?

3. Does the evidence as to defendant’s alleged misconduct amount to indignities to the person of plaintiff husband?

The question of plaintiff’s residence is not a difficult one. Notwithstanding his averment in the complaint which he filed in Nevada on May 17, 1954, which was within a year of the filing of the complaint in the instant case, the evidence was conclusive that plaintiff was continuously a bona fide resident of Grove City, Mercer County, for over 25 years prior to the filing of the complaint in this case.

When he left Grove City for Nevada in April of [378]*3781954 he had a contract with the hospital which did not expire until August of that year. He made arrangements with the hospital for a leave of absence for a couple of months. In addition, he arranged with his landlady to get his room back when he returned, if it was still vacant. He took with him but one suitcase and stored his personal belongings with a friend, asking the latter to look after them until he returned. He retained the hospital in Grove City as his mailing address. He did not change his voting address. He testified that he did not have any intention to make Nevada his permanent home. He explained the contradictory statement in his complaint by stating that he signed what his attorney in Nevada had drawn up for him to sign in order to get a divorce. It is obvious that his short stay in Nevada was solely for the purpose of attempting to qualify as a litigant under the liberal divorce laws of that State and was with no intention on his part to establish an actual residence in that State. He, therefore, had a legal, bona fide residence in Pennsylvania and was entitled to file the complaint in the present case.

“It has been repeatedly held that mere temporary absences from the state of domicile during the year preceding the filing of a libel will not, in and of themselves, defeat the right of the libellant to invoke the jurisdiction of the proper court of the state of which he is technically a citizen.”: Huston v. Huston, 130 Pa. Superior Ct. 501.

The second question raised by the exceptions is whether the McKean County decree in the proceeding for divorce from bed and board constitutes a bar to plaintiff’s present proceeding for absolute divorce.

Our appellate courts have decided that a proceeding in the court of quarter sessions under the Act of April 13, 1867, P. L. 78, resulting in an order for the payment by the husb-and of an allowance to his wife for her [379]*379support, will not bar a divorce at his suit on the ground of desertion, although the record of such suit is admissible in a divorce proceeding and is evidence against the husband which requires a strong case to overcome: Loughney v. Loughney, 111 Pa. Superior Ct. 214.

On the other hand, the court of common pleas of Beaver County, in the case of Foster v. Foster, 70 D. & C. 485, held that a husband was barred from bringing an action in divorce against his wife on the ground of desertion when an Ohio court, having jurisdiction over the parties, had entered a decree for permanent alimony and separate maintenance in favor of the wife, in which it was found that defendant had been guilty of extreme cruelty and gross neglect of duty towards plaintiff. The court held that inasmuch as the Ohio court would have deprived the husband in that case of the right to relitigate the same matters in a divorce action brought by him in Ohio, the Pennsylvania court should attribute a similar decree of finality to the Ohio decree for alimony.

Neither of these precedents, however, controls the case before us.

A proceeding for divorce a mensa et thoro is distinguishable from an action for nonsupport. The latter is a criminal proceeding in which the Commonwealth is plaintiff. In the former, the husband and wife are the only parties. The divorce from bed and board is an action for divorce provided for in the Divorce Law approved May 2, 1929, P. L. 1237. Section 11 of that act reads as follows:

“Upon complaint, and due proof thereof, it shall be lawful for a wife to obtain a divorce from bed and board, whenever it shall be judged, in the manner hereinafter provided in cases of divorce, that her husband has: (a) Maliciously abandoned his family; or (b) Maliciously turned her out of doors; or (c) By [380]

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Knaus v. Knaus
95 A.2d 358 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1953)
Albrecht v. Albrecht
109 A.2d 209 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1954)
Wallace's Estate
174 A. 897 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1934)
McKrell v. McKrell
42 A.2d 609 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1945)
Loughney v. Loughney
169 A. 450 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1933)
Reiter v. Reiter
48 A.2d 66 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1945)
Friess v. Friess
39 A.2d 151 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1944)
Koontz v. Koontz
97 Pa. Super. 70 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1929)
Blose v. Blose
61 A.2d 370 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1948)
Rutherford v. Rutherford
32 A.2d 921 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1943)
Evans v. Evans
31 A.2d 590 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1943)
Huston v. Huston
197 A. 774 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1937)
Duchossois v. Duchossois
10 A.2d 824 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1939)
Katz v. Katz
157 A. 362 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1931)
Grove's Appeal
37 Pa. 443 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1861)
Gordon v. Gordon
48 Pa. 226 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1865)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
7 Pa. D. & C.2d 375, 1956 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 207, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/orr-v-orr-pactcomplmercer-1956.