PEASE VS. PEASE (DIVORCE)

Key holdings

Practitioner summary

Defendant wife appealed from a decree dismissing plaintiff husband's extreme-cruelty divorce action without prejudice to a new suit on the same cause if reconciliation failed. The alleged cruelty postdated a May 3, 1919 Sangamon County, Illinois separate maintenance decree in the wife's favor; her answer denied the cruelty and pleaded nonsupport, wilful desertion, and the Illinois record as affirmative defenses, praying only dismissal and general relief. The trial court found jurisdictional facts true, the cruelty and supplemental-complaint desertion allegations untrue, found the nonsupport defense untrue except that plaintiff had paid only $160 on the Illinois decree since September 22, 1922, and found the Illinois record proved but insufficient as recrimination or res judicata. Held: the Illinois record was not res judicata because the acts relied on were subsequent to that decree; a recriminatory defense is a plea in bar that requires guilt of both spouses of divorce-grade misconduct, and it cannot bar relief where the court found the defendant guiltless of the conduct charged - a contrary judgment would have contradicted that finding. Because the defenses were pleaded defensively rather than as grounds for affirmative divorce relief, the defendant was entitled at most to nonsuit or dismissal under subdivision 5 of section 295 of the civil practice act (Rev. Laws 5237), and the judgment based on failure of proof has that effect; every presumption favors the judgment (Raine v. Ennor, 39 Nev. 365). Affirmed.

In plain language

A husband sued his wife for divorce in Nevada, claiming extreme cruelty committed after an Illinois court (Sangamon County) had already granted the wife a separate maintenance decree against him on May 3, 1919. The wife denied the cruelty and raised the Illinois proceedings, nonsupport, and desertion as defenses. The trial court found the cruelty charges untrue but, instead of entering judgment for the wife on the merits, dismissed the case without prejudice so the husband could sue again on the same grounds if the couple could not reconcile. The wife appealed, arguing she was entitled to a judgment on the merits. The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed. The Illinois separate maintenance record could not decide the case as res judicata because the cruelty the husband alleged supposedly happened after that decree. A recriminatory defense - the idea that a plaintiff whose own misconduct would justify a divorce cannot get one - only operates when the defendant was actually guilty of the misconduct charged, and here the court found the wife guiltless, so there was nothing to bar. Since the wife pleaded her matters purely as defenses and asked only for dismissal, not for a divorce of her own, the trial court could do nothing but dismiss once the husband failed to prove his case, and a dismissal for failure of proof is effectively a nonsuit, which the statute allows.