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10 Ala. 527

Hill v. Hill

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided June 15, 1846

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1846-06-15

Writ of Error to the Chancery Court of Sumter. Bill for a divorce by the plaintiff in error. The bill seeks a divorce a mensa et thoro, and charges that the defendant was violent, and disorderly in her conduct, “ until at length her life was one continued practice of extreme cruelty, upon your orator and his children.” It further charges that she has left his house, and gone to the State of Mississippi.

Relies on Bowie v. Minter

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1846-06-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 20 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 1958

1 federal appellate · 17 state decisions

50184618501860187018801890190019101920193019401950decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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ORMOND, J.

¶1The original bill is defective, in not stating in what the cruelty complained of, consisted. As it is stated in the bill, it is a conclusion from' facts, which are not set forth, and cannot therefore be answered. But this objection to the bill, is waived by omitting to state it as a cause of demurrer ; the general demurrer in the answer, merely goes to the equity of the bill. The answer of the defendant fully denies all the equity of the bill, and independent of this, the decree of the chancellor dismissing it was correct, as there was no evidence sustaining it.

¶2The supplemental bill is not sufficient, as the cause for filing it did not exist when the original bill was filed. A supplemental bill, is merely a continuation of the original bill, rendered necessary by a change of the parties, or the happening of some event since the institution of the suit. [Bowie v. Minter, 2 Ala. 411.] If this is now to be considered as a bill for a dissolution from the bonds of matrimony, for the abandonment of the wife, it was commenced too soon, as the cause did not exist at that time. This defect can not be cured by a supplemental bill, which although in its effects the commencement of a new suit, rests for support on the original bill, of which it is a continuation.

¶3Let the decree of the chancellor be confirmed.

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