Capps v. Capps’s Empirical Analysis
1975
Citation profile
20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently August 2006
20 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.
Relationships
Relies on Hill v. Hill · Wallihan v. Hughes · Town of Vinton v. City of Roanoke · Hoyt v. Hoyt · American Agricultural Chemical Co. v. Kennedy
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The phrase “public policy” is vague and not susceptible to fixed rules .... However, we have said that it is the policy of the law “ ‘to foster and protect marriage, to encourage the parties to live together and to prevent separation, marriage being the foundation of the family and of society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress ....’” It is because of this policy that we have held agreements, either antenuptial or post-nuptial, between husbands and wives, void when they tend to encourage or facilitate separation or divorce. However, we have also said that property settlements, when entered into by competent parties upon valid consideration for lawful purposes, are favored in the law and that we are therefore “averse to holding contracts unenforceable on the ground of public policy unless their illegality is clear and certain.” Thus, the general rule is that agreements between husband and wife relating to the adjustment of property rights, even though in contemplation of divorce, are not violative of established public policy unless collusive or made to facilitate a separation or aid in procuring a divorce.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““ ‘[W]here the consideration for the promise of one party is the promise of the other party, there must be absolute mutuality of engagement, so that each party has the right to hold the other to a positive agreement. Both parties must be bound, or neither is bound.’ ” Capps v. Capps, 216 Va. 378, 381 , 219 S.E. 2d 901, 903 (1975), quoting Town of Vinton v. City of Roanoke, 195 Va. 881, 896 , 80 S.E. 2d 608, 617 (1954); American Agricultural Chemical Co. v. Kennedy, 103 Va. 171, 176 , 48 S.E. 868, 870 (1904).”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.