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28 Ind. 291

Hedrick v. Hedrick

Indiana Supreme Court

Decided November 15, 1867

Indiana Supreme Court · decided 1867-11-15

<p>Bivokcs. — Change or Judges. — A change of judges after verdict, and before final decree, does not change the court; for all judicial purposes it remains the same, and such succeeding judge may render a final decree of divorce and allow alimony to the wife, without hearing any evidence, where answers by the jury to special interrogatories show the amount of the husband’s property.</p> <p>Alimony. — Under our statute, the court has power to allow to the wife all-mony, although, the divorce is granted to the husband for her misconduct.</p> <p>Same. — When divorced parties have two children, and one is granted to the custody of each, and the husband owns property to the amount of $13,000, an allowance of $3,500 for alimony will not be disturbed by this court as unreasonable.</p> <p>Same. — Costs.—When a divorce is decreed to the husband upon his own petition, it is not error to render judgment against him for the costs of the suit.</p> <p>Supreme Court. — Practice.—This court cannot interfere with a judgment rendered below, because the evidence does not justify the judgment, unless this court has before it all the evidence.</p> <p>Alimony. — Adjusting alimony is not yet controlled by definite rulos, and the determination of each case must depend upon its own circumstances and an enlightened sense of justice and public policy.</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1867-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 21 later decisions — most recently October 1952

21 state decisions

501867187018801890190019101920193019401950decided

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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¶1ON A PETITION FOR A REHEARING.

Frazer, C. J.

¶2— We know of no authority by which this court can be warranted in interfering with a judgment rendered below because the evidence did not justify that judgment, unless we have before us all the evidence. It is not enough that we have merely such a statement as enables us to know that the evidence which was deemed, sufficient below to justify the finding was not sufficient. Right verdicts are, doubtless, often rendered by wrong processes of reasoning. This court, however, has in such a matter to do with the result, and unless that is wrong, we cannot reverse.

¶3In adjusting alimony all the evidence in the cause ought to be considered and acted upon, and then the subject is often a difficult one. It is not yet controlled by definite rules, and the determination of each case must, therefore, depend upon its own circumstances and an enlightened sense of justice and public policy.

¶4Row the bill of exceptions shows merely the evidence which was “given before Judge West upon which he pronounced judgment.” This is entirely consistent with the fact that the whole evidence which was given in the cause would warrant the decree for alimony. The reason upon which the twenty-second rule of this court is founded is, I think, as applicable to the case before us, as it can possibly be to any case. That rule as it now stands merely expresses formally what had always been the practice of this court, and is no impediment to justice, and is easily complied with. If the principle upon which it is founded were relaxed to suit the exigencies of the present case, and relieve the appellant of what his counsel deem a great injustice, it must be ea*295tirely abandoned and tbe door opened to the abuses which must follow.

W. March and R. Lake, for appellant.J. W. Sansberry, for appellee.

¶5A petition for rehearing affords me an opportunity to give, more fully than was done in the former opinion, the sole reason which controlled me and one other member of the court in reaching the conclusion that the judgment should be affirmed.

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