My friends - Yesterday, we reviewed some facts in an 1841 Court of Appeals case in which a widower(Archibald Logan) and a widow(Eleanor Robb), aged about 70, had married with a written pre-nuptial agreement which would prevent either of the parties from having a claim upon the estate of the other, either by survivorship or otherwise. They both had families by an earlier marriage. Having married in 1835, they lived together for several years in harmony. In February of 1838, Mrs.Logan began berating her husband and accusing him of actions which, later in court proceedings, were found to be totally unsubstantiated. The situation became so untenable that Mr. Logan moved out of his house, renting it to a tenant, but telling the tenant to allow Mrs.Logan to stay as long as she desired and to treat her well. Mrs.Logan moved out the next day, and, some few days later, filed a suit in chancery court against Mr. Logan, accusing him of enormous cruelty and abandonment. He moved back into his house, but denied the charges, indicating that her own misbehavior was the cause for his having left the house. The lower court awarded Mrs. Logan a $500 yearly annuity payment, from which Mr. Logan appealed to the Court of Appeals, claiming she was entitled to nothing, because, among other reasons, there was a pre-nuptial agreement in place that barred Mrs.Logan from receiving anything from his estate. Mrs.Logan cross filed against Mr.Logan and demanded even more than the $500. The question on which we closed in yesterday's posting was whether Mrs. Logan was entitled to receive a yearly allowance from Mr. Logan, in view of the pre-nuptial agreement that was in place prior to their marriage in 1835. A number of you sent along some thoughts on the Court's possible direction in its decision. Most of these were correct in part. In a lengthy opinion, the Court of Appeals began by saying, "Whatever may have been the undisclosed origin or the secret history of this mysterious feud, the record, upon the face of which alone we must decide, does not sustain Mrs. Logan's accusatory allegations. And we are not allowed to doubt that she was not entitled to any relief, unless she had a right to it in consequence merely of abandonment." The Court then took us back to the common law of England, which, it was pointed out, would not allow for a divorce and alimony on the basis of abandonment alone - there had to be evidence of adultery and/or saevitias - this is, proven cruelty or endangerment of personal security. The Court brought us up to an act of the Kentucky Legislature in 1800, which authorized a decree for alimony after an abandonment by the husband for one year. Mr. Logan's counsel argued that there was no true "abandonment", as his leaving his wife was the only reasonable and logical way for him to get away from the antics of his wife was to leave the household, and that he told his renter that she should be allowed to stay and be treated well. Further, Mr. Logan's counsel cited the pre-nuptial agreement as barring any decree in favor of Mrs. Logan and that her own misconduct alone barred her. The Court took up each argument, and found against Mr. Logan on all of them. The Court indicated that Mr. Logan stated that he wanted a permanent separation from his wife and made no effort at all to offer maintenance for his estranged wife, leaving her to her own resources to live. The Court stated, "This was 'abandonment', statutory as well as actual." The Court noted that his return to his home did not constitute any invitation to his wife to rejoin him, and, indeed, if she had come back, would have caused him to leave again. The Court found the pre-nuptial agreement to be applicable only to marriage rights. The Court said further, "It did not absolve the husband from his legal obligation to maintain his wife during cohabitation - nor, for the same reason, can it exonerate him from contributing to her maintenance after deserting her, unless her own estate be amply sufficient." The Court awarded Mrs. Logan an additional $300 in yearly alimony. The Court said, in a remarkable(both in its marvelous use of the English language and its subject) discourse on the state of matrimony: "And it is certainly important to the general stability and harmony of that relation, that the parties should know, that having taken each other with all their infirmities, and vowed reciprocal fidelity and forbearance for life, it is their interest, as well as their duty, to 'bear and forbear', as far as the resources of love, philosophy and religion can enable them. And this, to an essential, if not to the whole extent, is the law of the land - which will not countenance or permit separation from bed and board for incompatibility or austerity of temper, alienation of affection, domestic discord, or reproachful words, however vulgar, or violent, or undeserved, but requires, by the strongest of all temporal sanctions, that all difficulties resulting from such avoidable causes shall either be adjusted in the domestic forum or borne with patience, as contingent incidents of the union the parties had mutually promised to cement by love and adorn by grace for life. Parties so unfortunately united in the most sacred and endearing of all earthy relations, must submit to the misfortune as one of the consequences of an injudicious choice. They must strive to conciliate by kindness and forbearance - must subdue by decent resistance or prudent conciliation; and, if this cannot be done, both must suffer in silence. This is our law, human and divine, and if it be complained that, by this inactivity of the Courts, much injustice may be suffered and much misery produced, the answer is, that Courts of Justice do not pretend to furnish cures for all the miseries of life. They cannot make men virtuous, and, as the happiness of the world depends on its virtue, there may be much unhappiness in it which human laws cannot undertake to remove." And, in the final sentence of the Opinion, the Court said: "And though it was not the lot of these venerable parties to climb the hill of life together, yet, having united their destinies on its declining steep, there can be no good reason why they may not yet totter down it hand in hand, and sleep together for all time at its base." So, in the end, the pre-nuptial agreement had no effect on the outcome of this case, with the Court of Appeals indicating that it applied only to those rights gained by matrimony, and not to the abandonment by one party of the other. This case gives us a very clear picture of why there were not large numbers of divorces in the 19th century. This was long before simple incompatibility became grounds for obtaining a divorce decree. It is also interesting to note the long distance which we have travelled in 200 years insofar as the legal obligations of marriage are concerned. The eloquent language used by the Court in the above Opinion clearly defined what was expected of the parties in 1841. Tomorrow, we will have another biography from the JP Vignettes series. -B =====================================================================