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58 N.H. 329

Wiggin v. Buzzell

Supreme Court of New Hampshire

Decided June 5, 1878

Supreme Court of New Hampshire · decided 1878-06-05

Writ op Entry. Pacts agreed. The plaintiff was formerly the wife of the defendant. The defendant owning an equity of redemption of a farm on which he lived with the plaintiff and their minor children, in 1875 the plaintiff obtained a judgment divorcing her from him, and giving her the custody of the children and $700 alimony. Since the divorce, the defendant has continued to live on the farm, but the plaintiff and the children have not occupied it nor had a home there.

Relies on Gleason v. Emerson

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1878-06-05

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently July 1986

7 state decisions

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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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Doe, C. J.

¶1 The homestead right belonged, not to the defendant, but to his “wife, widow, or children.” Gen. St., c. 124; Laws of 1868, c. 1, ss. 33, 34, 35, 36, 37; Laws of 1869, c. 10; Laws of 1871, c. 29. For reasons given in Gleason v. Emerson, 51 N. H. 405, the plaintiff’s homestead right, not being reserved in the judgment of divorce, was lost. The amount of her alimony was determined upon consideration of her loss of her rights in his property. The judgment did not leave them such a cause of contention as a joint home, nor authorize an expulsion of the defendant by the plaintiff’s exercise of her former right of homestead, but made such a partition of property as dissolved her right in his home. Gen. St., c. 163, ss. 12, 13, 14,15. The children were transferred to the custody of the plaintiff, and since the divorce the farm has not been their home, nor been occupied by them. As it was not occupied by the defendant or the plaintiff, “ and his or her family,” at the time of the levy of her execution, his interest in it was not exempt from that levy. Laws of 1868, c. 1, s. 33.

¶2 Judgment for the plaintiff.

Stanley, J., did not sit.
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