BLANKENSHIP VS. BLANKENSHIP (DIVORCE)

Key holdings

Practitioner summary

Appeal by the defendant wife from a decree granting the plaintiff husband a divorce for extreme cruelty committed after May 9, 1927, and from the order denying her new trial motion. Ducker, C.J. The wife's affirmative defense pleaded, and the reply admitted, two San Diego County superior court judgments: a July 22, 1925 judgment granting her separate maintenance on findings of the husband's extreme cruelty, and a May 9, 1927 judgment on the husband's divorce action and her cross-bill finding both parties guilty of extreme cruelty and denying relief to both. Held: the California judgments are conclusive proof of the husband's pre-May 9, 1927 extreme cruelty, and the rule of recrimination bars his decree - where each spouse has been guilty of misconduct constituting cause for divorce, neither is entitled to the remedy, notwithstanding that the acts on which the trial court granted the divorce postdated the California adjudication (Conant v. Conant, 10 Cal. 249; 2 Bishop on Marriage, Divorce and Separation secs. 337-409, 395-396). The doctrine of comparative rectitude was expressly rejected: divorce is a remedy provided for an innocent party, and the doctrine would nullify the statutory consequences visited on the guilty party under sec. 5841, Rev. Laws (divesting property and pecuniary rights and rights touching the children). Judgment reversed and cause remanded with directions to enter judgment for the appellant dismissing the action. Rehearing denied per curiam September 13, 1929 (52 Nev. 48, 280 P. 97).

In plain language

A husband sued his wife for divorce in Nevada, alleging extreme cruelty, part of it occurring after May 9, 1927. The wife's defense rested on two California judgments: a 1925 judgment granting her separate maintenance after finding the husband guilty of extreme cruelty, and a May 9, 1927 judgment in which the California court found both spouses guilty of extreme cruelty and denied a divorce to either. The Nevada trial court found the wife had committed new acts of cruelty after the California rulings and granted the husband a divorce. The wife appealed. The Nevada Supreme Court reversed under the doctrine of recrimination: when each spouse has been guilty of misconduct that is a ground for divorce, neither is entitled to one. The California judgments conclusively proved the husband's own extreme cruelty, and the fact that the wife's misconduct came after the California adjudication did not matter. The court expressly refused to adopt the competing doctrine of 'comparative rectitude,' under which the less guilty spouse can still get a divorce - divorce in Nevada is a remedy for an innocent party. The case was sent back with directions to dismiss the husband's action, and a rehearing was later denied.