299 P. 273 | Wyo. | 1931
The plaintiff herein, Murel Mahoney, was granted a divorce from the defendant Lowell Mahoney, and the latter has appealed.
No good purpose would be subserved in setting forth the details of the facts as shown by the record. Plaintiff and defendant were married in 1928, the former 18, the latter 22 years of age. They had no trouble or difficulties until a child was expected. Plaintiff claims and testified that the defendant was displeased with that fact, gave her medicine to produce an abortion, attempted for months to induce her to get rid of the child, persisting therein even after its birth, and then, after the baby was born, virtually gave her the choice, either to dispose of the child or to leave him. While, during the early period of pregnancy, she willingly took the medicine, it seems clear that she afterwards changed her mind, and she testified that when the choice above mentioned was presented to her, she informed her husband that she would live with her child, and that she soon thereafter, and within about two weeks after the child's birth, left defendant's home and returned to the home of her parents. There is, contrary to defendant's contention, corroborative testimony of plaintiff's claim. The latter's step-mother testified to an admission on defendant's part of the vital portion of plaintiff's charge. And a few days after the parties separated, defendant wrote a letter, admitting that he was the cause of the separation and begged forgiveness, and promised that he would do better in the future. No adequate explanation of this letter, or of the causes of separation were given by defendant in his testimony. True, the facts above mentioned were denied by him, and he was to some extent corroborated by other testimony, but the credibility of the witnesses was for the trial court, and we cannot interfere with its finding on this point.
The basis for the divorce, as stated in the petition, was extreme cruelty, and counsel for the defendant contends that the facts shown by the plaintiff are not such as to *160 authorize a divorce on the ground mentioned, first, because the plaintiff failed to testify to any physical or mental suffering, and second, because the record fails to disclose that plaintiff's health was impaired. There is testimony, however, that immediately after the birth of the child, plaintiff cried continually, and mental suffering on the part of the plaintiff, assuming that her testimony is true, must have been the inevitable result of defendant's conduct. Virtual rejection by the defendant of his child must have wounded the plaintiff's feelings deeply.
A number of courts seem to hold that impairment of health is necessary to constitute extreme cruelty. Other courts, however, under a statute which defines extreme cruelty as consisting of the infliction either of grievous bodily injury or grievous mental suffering, hold the contrary. 9 R.C.L. 342-343; Donaldson v. Donaldson,
The judgment of the trial court should be affirmed and it is so ordered.
Affirmed.
KIMBALL, Ch. J., and RINER, J., concur.