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123 Mass. 370

Stuart v. Stuart

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided November 28, 1877

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1877-11-28

Petition, filed June 4,1877, for an attachment for a contempt in neglecting and refusing to give bond to secure the payment of alimony in accordance with the terms of a decree of this court, rendered at April term 1877, upon the libel of the petitioner, filed May 19, 1876, and the default of the respondent, and granting her a divorce from the bond of matrimony, and ordering him to pay to her the sum of $250 and costs on May 1,1877, and the further sum of $800 yearly until…

Relies on In re Chiles · Winslow v. Nayson · Burrows v. Purple

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1877-11-28

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently March 1977

6 state decisions

2018771880189019001910192019301940195019601970decided

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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Gray, C. J.

¶1This is a petition for an attachment for a contempt in neglecting and refusing to obey an order of this court, requiring the respondent to give bond for the payment of alimony to the petitioner! No question as to the form of the petition has been argued or considered. The only question reserved is whether, upon the facts stated in the report, an attachment should issue. But we have not sufficient facts before us to enable us to decide that question.

¶2The respondent’s conveyance and transfer of his property, in anticipation of his wife’s filing a libel against him for a divorce and alimony, and with intent to prevent the execution of any decree for alimony that she might obtain, were a fraud upon her, for which she might in proper form have redress. Burrows v. Purple, 107 Mass. 428, 435. But they could not of themselves constitute a contempt of court; because a person cannot be in contempt of court for disobedience of an order not yet passed, in a suit not yet begun, and of which therefore he cannot have had notice. Thompson v. Baskervill, 3 Rep. in Ch. 114. Winslow v. Nayson, 113 Mass. 411. In re Chiles, 22 Wall. 157, 169.

¶3Such conveyance and transfer by the respondent, with the fact that the grantees were his son-in-law and daughter, were competent evidence upon the question whether the respondent now has in his possession or control the means of obeying the order of the court, and is consequently in contempt for disobedience of that order. But this is a question of fact, which has not *372been passed upon below, and cannot be reported for the determination of the full court. Gen. Sts. e. 112, § 10. Sparhawk v. Sparhawk, 120 Mass. 390. The matter must therefore stand for Further hearing before a single judge.

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