Buys v. Buys

Citations

• 56 Pa. Super. 338
• 1914 Pa. Super. LEXIS 88

Syllabus

<p>Divorce — Desertion—Abandonment of common habitation by husband — • Conduct of wife.</p> <p>1. A husband cannot establish a willful and malicious desertion by his wife as a ground for divorce where it appears that he himself left the common habitation owned by his wife on the ground that the wife found fault with him for everything he did; that she did not treat him as a wife should; that she made him sleep on the third floor on account of his snoring, and that after her daughter was born her whole life was practically in the daughter.</p> <p>2. In such a case where the husband testifies that some time after he had left the common habitation, he proposed to his wife that he would come back to her if she would treat him as a wife should, and that she declined, such a refusal on her part is not a willful and malicious desertion within the meaning of the act.</p> <p>3. Where a husband testifies that after he had left the common habitation on the ground of the unkindness of his wife, and her refusal to live with him as a wife he had taken another house and requested by letter his -wife to come and five with him there, he cannot establish a desertion by her unless he shows that his letter had been received by her, or that he had deposited it in the post office, or in a proper mail box properly addressed to her.</p> <p>4. While the Act of June 8, 1911, P. L. 720, makes a libelant a fully competent witness to prove the fact of desertion, yet where the case rests on the uncorroborated testimony of the libelant, the courts will scrutinize it with extreme care and will require strict proof of every essential fact.</p>