Shaw v. Shaw

OGDEN, J.,

pro

tem.

This is an appeal by Vera A. Shaw, cross-defendant below, from a judgment granting respondent Joseph E. Sha^, cross-complainant below, an interlocutory decree of divorce upon the ground of extreme cruelty.

The parties intermarried in the year. 1914 and have been separated since 1924. At the time of their separation the parties lived at Bremerton, Washington, and by order of the courts of that state respondent was awarded the custody of the two minor daughters of the parties, who at the time of this trial were of the ages of fifteen and thirteen years respectively, and was ordered to pay appellant for her support and maintenance the sum of fifty dollars per month. In January, 1929, respondent, who is a lieutenant in the United States navy, moved to the city of Los Angeles pursuant to a change of station where he maintained a home for the children in charge of a housekeeper. In March of the same year appellant established her residence in the city of Long Beach, and in October commenced action for separate maintenance. The judgment here was granted upon respondent’s cross-complaint in that proceeding.

The judgment is based upon four specifications of acts of extreme cruelty. The first involves the sending by appellant of two letters, one on the eleventh and one on the twenty-fourth day of September, 1929, to the navy department at Washington, D. C., complaining that respondent refused to give her or her attorneys any information as to the whereabouts of her children and asking that he be compelled to reveal their address. She also complained that he had failed to send payments for her support for the months of August and September. The second relates to a reference to respondent by appellant in November, 1929, while visiting the children and in their presence, that he was a liar and rogue. The third is based upon an incident during the trial of the separate maintenance action when appellant in the hearing of the children and others pointed out the housekeeper as the woman respondent was living

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with. The fourth specification is based upon the testimony of appellant during the trial of the separate maintenance action that she had not seen a bed in the dining-room of respondent’s home where it had been previously testified to by respondent he slept when at home. The trial court, upon evidence duly corroborated, found all of these specifications to be true and to have been falsely made for the purpose of humiliating and disgracing respondent and that respondent was thereby in fact, when notified of them, caused grievous mental suffering.