VALVERDE VS. VALVERDE (DIVORCE)

Key holdings

Practitioner summary

The court framed the sole dispositive issue as whether the evidence sustained the finding that the wife committed extreme cruelty resulting in injury to the husband's health. It acknowledged the general rule against disturbing findings on conflicting evidence but reiterated the exception, drawn from State v. Virginia & T. R. Co., 23 Nev. 283, 46 P. 723, and Consolazio v. Summerfield, 54 Nev. 176, 10 P. (2d) 629, that a substantial conflict is required and that where on all the evidence a wrong conclusion clearly was reached, the judgment will be reversed. The court found the husband's testimony uncorroborated and self-impeached by at least three signed writings contradicting it, as well as contradicted by the wife and by neutral witnesses (Capt. Kindervater, Mrs. Epling, Miss Cottrell, Mrs. Steel) establishing the parties occupied separate apartments and that the husband was the aggressor. Considering his moral character as bearing on credibility, the court held his testimony entitled to no consideration. Invoking the provocation doctrine of Kapp v. District Court, 31 Nev. 444, 103 P. 235, quoting Reed v. Reed, 4 Nev. 395, the court held a party cannot by his own misconduct provoke the spouse's acts and reap a divorce. Finally, applying Kelly v. Kelly, 18 Nev. 49, the court held cruelty is a relative term and the husband's testimony of an "adverse effect" on his health was too indefinite and, in any event, insufficient to show impairment of health.

In plain language

An Army captain sued his wife for divorce in Nevada, claiming she had treated him with extreme cruelty after January 1929, the month a Florida court had granted her a separate-maintenance decree. He described her nagging, refusing to move out of their military quarters, embarrassing him, opening his mail, threatening him, and even physical violence. The wife denied it all, pointed to the Florida decree, and said he had deserted her. The trial court believed the husband and granted him the divorce. The wife appealed. The Nevada Supreme Court reversed, finding the husband's evidence worthless. Although courts usually will not second-guess findings based on conflicting testimony, that rule requires a genuine, substantial conflict; here the husband's story was uncorroborated and repeatedly contradicted by his own signed writings, by the wife, and by several neutral witnesses who testified the couple lived in separate apartments and that he, not she, was the aggressor. The court detailed how he had pursued another woman, told her he was single, given his wife stacks of that woman's letters to try to push her into divorcing him, falsely accused the wife of adultery and threatened to have her declared insane, then signed a retraction three days later. The court held a spouse cannot provoke the other's misconduct and then win a divorce based on it, and that the husband's vague claim of an "adverse effect" on his health was too indefinite and, given his own character, unconvincing. It reversed and directed the trial court to enter a decree finding the cruelty charges untrue and ruling for the wife, with costs.