Farnham v. Farnham

Citations

• 73 Ill. 497

Syllabus

<p>1. Divorce — degree of cruelty required. Proof of two distinct acts of personal violence to the person of the wife by a husband, although no great physical injury was inflicted, will, under the statute, constitute technical cause for divorce; and abusive language and false charges of un, chastity, made in the presence of others, may also be considered in connection, by the jury, as characterizing the physical acts of cruelty.</p> <p>3. Same—effect of abusive language on relation. While the statute has not made abusive language, and the application of coarse and vulgar epithets, a cause for divorce, yet such conduct on the part of a husband towards his wife, and charging her with a want of chastity, without cause, is sufficient to justify her in abandoning him, and in living separate and apart from him.</p> <p>3. Same—condonation defined. Condonation is forgiveness upon condition the injury shall not he repeated, and is dependent upon future good usage and conjugal kindness, and it must be free, and not obtained by force and violence.</p> <p>4. Same—condonation, how avoided. Condonation of personal acts of violence and cruelty may he avoided by abusive language and the use of opprobrious epithets. Cruel treatment does not always consist in actual violence, and a wife, having forgiven her husband’s acts of physical cruelty, may, from the subsequent use of abusive and brutal language, and charges of infidelity, conclude that it will end, as on the prior occasion, in personal violence. In such case she is not hound to submit to actual violence as a condition to relief in a court of equity.</p> <p>5. Same—condonation procured unfairly. As fraud vitiates every transaction into which it enters, an act of condonation induced by false representations can be no more binding- than any other contract obtained by fraud. If made upon assurances, a part of which the party making- them admits were false, it will not be binding.</p> <p>6. Practice—remarks of judge calculated to h