165 Pa. 126 | Pa. | 1895
Opinion by
Henry Martin, the appellant, is a creditor and the administrator of the estate of Archy M. Grieve, deceased, and Mary Grieve, the appellee, is the widow of the decedent and as such claimed and was awarded in the court below the exemption allowed by the 5th section of the act of April 14,1851, P. L. 613.
The decedent and the appellee were lawfully married at Pine Grove in the province of Ontario, Canada, on the 25th of December, 1876, and lived together there five or six years, during which time three children were born to them. In 1881 or 1882 he abandoned his wife and children and went, the}'knew not where. After an absence of two or three years he wrote to his wife requesting her to meet him in Hamilton in the province of Ontario. She complied with his request and the result of their meeting was that they became reconciled to each other, and about the first of October, 1884, he left “ for the States ” with the understanding between them that he should make a home for them there and that she should remain in Canada until he came or sent for her. He occasionally wrote to her until Nov. 1,1888, after which time she heard nothing from him. His letters furnished no satisfactory clue to his whereabouts. As they were never mailed at the places in which they appeared to have been written, they indicated that he was without a residence, or if he had one that he meant to conceal it from her. It now appears that in 1888 he settled in Lancaster, Pa., and that in 1889 he married another woman who lived with him there until the 23d of August, 1893, when he died. As the appellee was never divorced from him, nor he from her, the second marriage was void, and her rights in his estate were not affected by it. All the evidence points to the conclusion that the appellee was a devoted wife and mother, and that she bravely bore the burdens which her husband’s malicious and inexcusable desertion of his family imposed. To
A careful consideration of the decisions bearing upon the question before us has convinced us that the learned court below reached a correct conclusion in this case.
Decree affirmed and appeal dismissed at the costs of the appellant.