205 P. 973 | Or. | 1922
— This is a suit for divorce instituted by the wife. Both parties seek a divorce, and each charges the other with cruel and inhuman treatment. After hearing the evidence offered by the respective parties, the Circuit Court found that both parties were at fault, and entered a decree dismissing the suit. Both plaintiff and defendant appeal from that decree.
The parties were married at Salem, Oregon, November 2,1915. At the time of the marriage plaintiff was forty-eight years of age and defendant was forty-three years of age, and a widower with five children, the youngest eight years of age and the oldest eighteen years of age. Among defendant’s children was one daughter, aged sixteen. Both plaintiff and defendant were accustomed to farm life, and after their marriage made their residence upon a small farm owned by defendant near Silverton, Oregon.
During the first year of plaintiff’s residence with defendant plaintiff quarreled frequently with the daughter of defendant, and on one occasion at least struck the latter, and about the same time plaintiff charged the defendant with sustaining improper sexual relations with his daughter. The charges made by plaintiff were referred by plaintiff and defendant to the pastor of the church of which they were both members, and after consultation it was recommended that the daughter, Mildred, be sent to live with her grandmother in the State of Washington, which was done, and thereafter until on or about the twentieth day of February 1920, plaintiff and defendant lived together and cohabited as husband and wife, and the matter of the charges of improper relations between the daughter and defendant was not again referred to, until the trial of this suit, when plaintiff reiterated them under oath while upon the stand as a witness. Plaintiff had no reasonable ground of suspicion upon which to make the charges against defendant of improper relations with his daughter, and the charges were false.
As a probable result of the accusations mentioned, the unfriendly feeling between the plaintiff and the children of defendant was increased, and in many instances they treated her discourteously, and did many things to annoy and vex her. At one time
In the month of February, 1920, the defendant rented his farm and disposed of the greater part of his personal property, and left plaintiff, going to the State of California. Defendant did not thereafter return to plaintiff, and since leaving has not contributed to her support.
In order for defendant to succeed in this contention, it is necessary to separate the accusations relied upon, from the numerous incidents which make up the domestic discord of the parties, that continued over a period of more than four years. The character of an act relied upon as a cause of divorce must bo determined in the light of all the related transactions occurring between the parties. Contemporaneously with the accusations made by plaintiff, defendant
The decree of the Circuit Court is affirmed, without costs to either party. Affirmed.