48 Md. App. 255 - Thomas v. Thomas’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
8 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently November 2009
8 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 Hall v. State · Dickey v. Dickey · Emerson v. Emerson · Hood v. Hood · Outlaw v. Outlaw
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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“By Acts of 1841, ch. 262, the General Assembly first conferred statutory jurisdiction over divorce actions on the equity courts. The Act set forth the grounds cognizable for a vinculo and a mensa divorces, confirmed the preexisting authority of equity over the latter, and, for the first time, expanded that authority to include the former. Section 3 provided that “in all cases where a divorce is decreed, the court passing the same shall have full power to award alimony to the wife____””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he ecclesiastical courts awarded alimony only as part of a decree of divorce a mensa et thoro; there was no separate action permitted just for alimony. Yet it appears that from a very early time the Maryland chancery court presupposed and occasionally exercised the authority to award alimony where no divorce was granted, and indeed where an a mensa divorce was not even sought.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“"It seems, therefore, to be well settled that at least when a divorce a mensa et thoro is granted, or when there is an allowance of alimony without divorce, the decree can be modified as circumstances may require, subject, of course, to some well established rules, and in this State alimony ceases upon the death of either party, or upon their living together.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Thomas v. Thomas
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.