Schuler v. Schuler

317 S.W.2d 619, 1958 Mo. App. LEXIS 485
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedNovember 5, 1958
DocketNo. 30047
StatusPublished

This text of 317 S.W.2d 619 (Schuler v. Schuler) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Schuler v. Schuler, 317 S.W.2d 619, 1958 Mo. App. LEXIS 485 (Mo. Ct. App. 1958).

Opinion

WOLFE, Judge.

This is an action for divorce in which the plaintiff charges numerous indignities. The defendant, who is a person of unsound mind, was represented by his duly appointed guardian, who alleged that the defendant was insane at the time the acts, of which complaint is made, were committed. There was a decree for the defendant and the plaintiff prosecutes this appeal.

Once before this case came here upon an appeal by the plaintiff from a similar decree and we held that the indignities proven were sufficient to warrant an award for plaintiff. We also held that there was insufficient proof that the defendant was insane at the time the indignities were committed, but we remanded the case so that the guardian might offer more evidence on that issue. Schuler v. Schuler, Mo.App., 290 S.W.2d 192.

Upon retrial it was shown that the parties were married on October 25, 1919, in the City of St. Louis. The plaintiff, testified that two years after their marriage defendant would at times beat her, choke her, and knock her down. She said that this occurred intermittingly from 1921 to the date of their final separation in 1938.

The plaintiff left the defendant in 1921 for a period of about two weeks after which they again resumed the relationship of husband and wife.

In 1923, the plaintiff was in need of an operation for which the defendant refused! [620]*620to pay. Her mother gave her the necessary money and this angered the defendant. On this occasion he knocked her down twice and she again left him for three or four weeks. After her return he struck her again and she left for another week.

In 1925, a son was born of the marriage. That same year the defendant started to associate with other women. When the plaintiff charged him with this, he told her it was none of her business. He choked her and called her vile names. Late in that year they again separated.

Again they were reunited and the same abuses were repeated. They need not be further detailed, except as they relate to the issue of defendant’s sanity. The plaintiff separated from the defendant on four subsequent occasions up to 1936. After each separation the defendant would promise not to mistreat the plaintiff and to discontinue his association with other women and the plaintiff would return. Despite the promises the defendant’s conduct would continue as before.

In 1938, the parties were living with plaintiff’s mother when a woman with whom the defendant had been associating came to the house and engaged the defendant in an argument about money. She was contending that she had loaned him money which he had not repaid. The plaintiff’s mother ordered them- both from the house and that was the final separation of the plaintiff and defendant.

In 1938, after the separation, the defendant telephoned his wife and told her that some men were preventing him from getting back to work at his old position with the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company and that he was going to go down with a gun and see what he could do. She warned the men to whom he had referred and when he arrived at their office he was arrested. He had no gun, but he was taken to the observation ward of the City Hospital. Later that year he was adjudicated of unsound mind and confined.

The plaintiff said that her husband had never done anything, prior to the threatened shooting, which would indicate that he was a person of unsound mind. She said that in her opinion he was sane prior to his confinement. Their son also testified that he considered his father to be a person of sound mind. Two men with whom the defendant had worked at the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company testified on behalf of the plaintiff. They had worked with the defendant in the rate department from 1922 to‘ 1935 and they both said that they considered the defendant to be a person of sound mind. They stated, however, that in the last few years of defendant’s service with the company he became moody and irritable. He violated a no-smoking rule of the company and would put his feet on his desk. Both of these witnesses stated that they considered him to be a person of sound mind.

A dentist who had treated the defendant for about ten years up to1 1935 stated that from his observation and conversations with the defendant he was of the opinion that the defendant was of sound mind.

Two other men who had worked with defendant were called as witnesses for the defense and both of them stated that in the latter years of his employment he became irascible and insubordinate; that at times he mumbled to himself and threw things on the floor. One of these witnesses stated that he could not say that the defendant was of unsound mind. The other thought that at times he did not seem to be of sound mind but he thought that the defendant knew what was right and what was wrong.

Dr. Walter L. Moore, superintendent of the St. Louis State Hospital and a specialist in psychiatry, was called by the defense. He was asked a long hypothetical question which embraced within it statements alleged to have been made by the plaintiff relative to the defendant’s conduct prior to his admission to the hospital. These statements are more fully discussed in Schuler v. Schuler, Mo.App., 290 S.W.2d 192, and [621]*621need not here be restated. The question asked was as follows:

“Q. Doctor, I would like to ask you a hypothetical question. I would like for you to assume the following facts: Assume that a man thirty-five or thirty-six years old in 1938 was admitted to the St. Louis City Hospital and later transferred to the St.

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Related

Niedergerke v. Niedergerke
271 S.W.2d 204 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1954)
Dallas v. Dallas
233 S.W.2d 738 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1950)
Schuler v. Schuler
290 S.W.2d 192 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1956)
Kinder v. Kinder
267 S.W.2d 356 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1954)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
317 S.W.2d 619, 1958 Mo. App. LEXIS 485, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/schuler-v-schuler-moctapp-1958.