Willson v. Willson

Citations

• 84 Wash. 240
• 146 P. 615
• 1915 Wash. LEXIS 785

Syllabus

<p>Divorce — Grounds—Cruelty—Evidence—Sufficiency. A decree of divorce in favor of the wife on the ground of cruel treatment and awarding custody of their child to her, is warranted where the evidence shows that the husband was a man of ungovernable temper and often applied to his wife language and epithets to which no woman ought to be subjected, and though sharply contradictory, tends to show that the husband from the start took a domineering and uncompromising attitude toward his wife, displayed little tact or consideration in his relations toward her, and sometimes threatened physical violence, though never actually inflicting it.</p> <p>Same — Decree — Disposition of Property — Evidence — Sufficiency. An award of one-half of defendant’s real and personal property, on decreeing a divorce in favor of the wife, should he modified so as to give the wife a money judgment for $10,000, and $25 monthly for the support of a minor child, where it appears that the property was the husband’s separate, property and consisted only of unproductive lands in Alaska and the state of Washington, worth about $60,000; that a holding corporation had been formed by him, capitalized at $100,000, for the purpose of handling the same, that two-fifths of the stock had been pledged for advances made, that the property was of speculative value as well as unproductive, could not be divided without loss, and would require careful management to avoid dissipation, and that the best interests of the wife would be subserved by awarding a definite sum in money rather than by an award of one-half of the estate.</p> <p>Same — Decree—Attorney’s Pees. An award of $1,000 attorney’s fees in decreeing a divorce to a wife in a hardly contested action involving some $60,000 worth of property, in which the defendant had interposed a cross-complaint, will be sustained on appeal as reasonable.</p>