Gordon v. Gordon

Citations

• 141 Ill. 160
• 21 L.R.A. 387

Syllabus

<p>1. Divorce fob adultery—what cohabitation will justify. Adultery, to justify a divorce, must be voluntary, and is not committed by a wife when she is compelled by force or ravishment, or when she has intercourse with a man not her husband through mistake in believing him her husband, without negligence on her part, or when she marries another man through a belief that her former husband is dead, and during the continuance of this belief lives in matrimonial intercourse with him, if the statute makes the second marriage merely voidable, and not absolutely void. If the second marriage is void, cohabitation under it will be adultery.</p> <p>2. The marriage of a woman with a man whose wife by a former marriage is still living undivorced, is void, although the parties may have acted in the honest belief of a prior divorce.</p> <p>3. After a hearing was had on a bill by a wife for a divorce, her solicitor gave her a paper which he said was a decree of divorce, and informed her that she was free to marry again, and procured her a license to marry, under which she married another man on May 7, when in fact the decree for divorce was not entered until May 28. In July or August following she learned the facts, and in the following January she was again married to the second husband: Held, that her cohabitation with the second husband from May 7 to May 28 was adulterous on her part, notwithstanding she believed she had been legally divorced from her first husband.</p> <p>4. if, after a formal divorce, the defendant should suppose it valid when it was void because of some fact of which he had no knowledge, then, since the parties are not bound to know the facts, cohabitation under a second marriage contracted by him would not be adultery, unless continued after he became aware of the facts.</p> <p>5. Same—recrimination in defense. Where the party seeking a divorce on the ground of adultery is also guilty of the same offense, the ’ defendant may, by answer, set up that fact a