Myers's Estate
Myers's Estate
Opinion of the Court
Opinion by
These propositions which apply to and control this case are established by the decisions : first, where a wife without reasonable cause leaves her husband and renounces all conjugal intercourse a considerable time before his death, she becomes not such a widow after his death as was in contemplation, of the legislature when the acts of assembly were passed which entitle her to appropriate $300 of his estate to her own use; second, the reasonable cause which justifies a wife in abandoning her husband and prevents the application of the foregoing principle is such as would entitle her to a divorce ; third, a single act of indignity which comes short of endangering life is not sufficient cause, and especially is this true if it occurred a long time before the separation and has been condoned : Odiorne’s Appeal, 54 Pa. 175 ; Nye’s Appeal, 126 Pa. 341; Henkel’s Estate, 13 Pa. Superior Ct. 337, at page 340; Mendenhall v. Mendenhall, 12 Pa. Superior Ct. 290, and cases cited on page 296; Roth v. Roth, 15 Pa. Superior Ct. 192. The last two cases and the cases therein cited bear more particularly upon the third proposition. The fact that the appellant left her husband more than a year prior to his death and did not return
Decree affirmed and appeal dismissed at appellant’s cost.
Reference
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- jDecedent's estates — Widow's exemption — Desertion by wife. Where a wife without reasonable cause leaves her husband and renounces all conjugal intercourse a considerable time before his death, she becomes not such a widow after his death as was in contemplation of the legislature when the acts of assembly were passed which entitled her to appropriate $300 of his estate to her own use. The reasonable cause which justifies a wife in abandoning her husband and prevents the application of the foregoing principle is such as would entitle her to a divorce. A single act of indignity which comes short of endangering life is not sufficient cause, and especially is this true if it occurred a long time before the separation and has been condoned. On an application for a widow’s exemption, it appeared that the widow had left her husband more than a year prior to his death, and did not return, or offer to do so. The husband made bona fide and repeated requests that she should return.- She testified as grounds for leaving him that her husband had once struck her, and that he had used abusive and opprobrious terms, but it did not appear that he was persistent in this. Other testimony tended to show that she had quarreled with him, that she had conceived a dislike for him, and that she had said that she had loved one man’s “little finger” better than her husband’s whole body. There was also evidence that her husband’s abusive language was caused by his jealousy of her former lover by whom she had had an illegitimate child. Held that the exemption was properly disallowed.