Handy v. Handy

Decided May 3, 1878

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1878-05-03

Libel for divorce from the bond of matrimony, alleging that adultery was committed by the libellee on January 1,1875, with John Pettigrew, and that the libellee and Pettigrew had lived together as man and wife from that date to the date of filing the libel, March 14, 1877.

Relies on Conant v. Conant · Clapp v. Clapp

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1878-05-03

How this case has been cited

Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently October 2001

1 district · 14 state decisions

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.

¶1By the Gen. Sts. e. 107, § 6, a sentence to imprisonment at hard labor in the state prison for five years or more is classed with adultery and other causes which are grounds for a divorce from the bond of matrimony. A person who has been so sentenced has been guilty of an offence of the same class and degree, under our divorce act, as one who has committed adultery. As soon as the libellant had been so sentenced, the right of his wife to apply for an absolute divorce was complete. It was therefore rightly ruled that he was not entitled to a divorce for her subsequent adultery. Hall v. Hall, 4 Allen, 39. Clapp v. Clapp, 97 Mass. 531. Nagel v. Nagel, 12 Misso. 53. Conant v. Conant, 10 Cal. 249. Adams v. Adams, 2 C. E. Green, 324, 328. See also Yeatman v. Yeatman, L. R. 1 P. & D. 489; Lempriere v. Lempriere, L. R. 1 P. & D. 569.

¶2Sxeeptions overruled.