Domestic law

“ Also, the much abused Court of Chancery tries to palliate the Common Law, and recognizes a separate interest between husband and wife, and allows the wife alone to file a bill to recover and protect her property, and trustees are not necessary if there has been an agreement. ”

“ The common law estate of dower and curtesy are retained in some of the states, in the larger number they are materially modified by statute, or wholly abolished and replaced by a right of succession to each other's property as defined by statute.
The distinctive duties resting on a husband are to provide a home, to support his wife and children, to protect her and them from injury or insult. Thus a husband has the same right to protect his wife, to assert and maintain her rights, even to kill a person, if necessary in her defense, that he would have in his own behalf. ”

“ In accordance with the true spirit of this section, our statute provides that the law of descents and distributions as regards the property of either husband or wife is the same; and the interests of one in the property of the other are the same with each; and that the common-law principles of estates of dower, and by courtesy are abolished. [481]
The rights of husband and wife in the control of their respective properties, both real and personal, are identical, as provided for in sections 1, 2, 3, and 4. ”

“ That it is competent for the state, in its fundamental law or by statute, to provide that all property thereafter acquired by or coming to a married woman shall constitute her separate estate, not subject to the control, nor liable for the debts, of the husband, and that such regulations do not take a way or impair any vested right of the husband, is in our judgment a proposition too clear to require argument, or the citation of authorities, to support it. ”

“ And the legitimation of a child by the subsequent marriage of its parents will be held to depend on the law of its father’s domicile or nationality. But the reference to the place of contract, carried to North America with the rest of the English jurisprudence of that date, still maintains in the courts of the United States a struggle with the doctrine of personal law as governing capacity and status. ”

“ True philosophy would extract good from every condition.... By art. IV, sec. 15, of our constitution, the courts of common pleas have exclusive jurisdiction in all cases of divorce, and by art. XIV, sec. 5, divorces from the bonds of matrimony shall not be allowed but by the judgment of a court as shall be prescribed by law. Thus the general assembly is denied the power to grant divorces directly, but is permitted to clothe the courts of common pleas with that power. ”

“ Only journeymen and masters and kingsmen—in the general sense, both men and women—had full rights of citizens, including the right to marry by Public Law. Others might get married by Private Law, but that was a rather uncomfortable method. ”

“ It makes a radical change in the relations of man and wife as those relations were at common law in this District. In respect of business and property, the married woman is given absolute control; in respect of the recovery, security, and protection of her property, she may sue separately in tort, as if she were unmarried; and in respect of herself, that is, of her person, she may sue separately as fully and freely as if she were unmarried, 'for torts committed against her.' So the statute expressly reads. ”

“ Whether a state legislature has authority to pass a law declaring a marriage void, or to award a divorce, has, incidentally, been made a question, but has never yet come directly in judgment. Marriage, though it be a civil institution, is understood to constitute a solemn, obligatory contract between the parties. And it has been, arguendo, denied, that a state legislature constitutionally possesses authority to dissolve that contract against the will, and without the default of either party. ”

“ It began to be seen that the children of bad or incompetent fathers should have the protection and support he failed to give them provided by the other parent, who to that end should be endowed with certain powers of ownership of property and person. And, as legislators had their attention drawn to these truths by concrete illustrations of abuses, by husbands and fathers, of the law which gave them absolute power over wife and children, they tried to alter the law in one and another particular. ”

“ Guardians, curators and committees of foreign minors or lunatics, deriving their authority from the law or jurisdiction of the latter’s domicile or nationality, can sue and give receipts for their personal property. A court will not decree the divorce of persons not domiciled within its jurisdiction, and it will recognize foreign divorces if, and only if, they have been decreed by a jurisdiction to which the parties were subject by domicile or nationality. ”

“ The wife is bound to live with the husband wherever he may fix his residence.
A wife cannot, without her husband’s permission, go to law, make any contract, or acquire goods, nor alienate or pledge goods without such permission. The wife may, of course, in certain cases, such as divorce, acquire judicial authorization for prosecuting or defending a suit in the courts. ”

“ But when the suit is brought in a court of the domicile there is no room for doubt. It is extravagant to suppose that the courts of that place will help a married woman to make her property there liable in circumstances in which the local law says that it shall be free, simply by stepping across a State line long enough to contract. ”

“ Among these were the right of the husband to control the property and receive the income without accounting for it, and the liability of the estate for articles of support and comfort procured for the use of the family suitable to its condition in life, for which the husband would have been liable according to the common law. ”

“ The condition of settling two hundred families on the land has not been complied with in fact; the question is, has it been complied with in law, or has such matter been presented to the court as dispenses with the performance and divests the grant of that condition. ”

“ To make the improvident and negligent husband and father, as well as those who are liable for the maintenance of the dependant relatives, namely, the grandparents, parents, children, grand-children and relatives of a poor person of sufficient ability, realize the obligations that the law has cast upon them, to advise and admonish in the first instance as to their duty to their dependants, and to punish if advice be not followed, has been the rule and practice of the court. ”

“ A court of equity will not interfere with the husband's right to receive the income during the coverture, though the wife resist the application."
No person convicted of Catholicism may practice the common law as a counsellor, clerk, attorney, or solicitor, nor may practice civil law as advocate, or proctor, nor shall be justice, minister, clerk, or steward in any court, nor practice medicine, nor perform as apothecary, nor be officer in a town, in the army, or navy, or forfeit 100 pounds as punishment. Nor may they be administrators of estates, or have custody of any child as guardian. ”

“ Unless positively required by direct enactment the courts should not presume a design upon the part of Congress, in relieving the unfortunate debtor, to make the law a means of avoiding enforcement of the obligation, moral and legal, devolved upon the husband to support his wife and to maintain and educate his children. ”

“ Not so with marriage. The relation once formed, the law steps in and holds the parties to various obligations and liabilities. It is an institution, in the maintenance of which in its purity the public is deeply interested, for it is the foundation of the family and of society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress.' 125 U.S. 210, 31 L. ed. ”

“ Whether a wife divorced a mensa et thoro can acquire another domiciliation in a State of this Union different from that of her husband, to entitle her, by her next friend, to sue him in a court of the United States having equity jurisdiction, to recover from him alimony due, and which he refuses to make any arrangement to pay; and whether a court of equity is not a proper tribunal for a remedy in such a case. ”

“ When the husband has left the place of conjugal domicile without making any arrangements for his wife’s support, the judge is authorized by law to make an order that her maintenance shall be paid out of any fund or property which the husband may have left in deposit or in trust, or invested in any trade or business. ”

“ Earlier and Better Use of Domestic Relations Court.—Another way by which society should undertake to supply in newer and more democratic forms the supervision, the control, and the support to the individual married couple and their children, which the older collective family organization sought to supply, is an earlier and a better use of the Domestic Relations Court, or of some advisory agency to prevent the breaking up of families. ”

“ Marriage requires two parties to give their free consent to form a relationship, which then forms the foundation of a household. FF 20, 34. The spouses must consent to support each other and any dependents. FF 34-35, 37. The state regulates marriage because marriage creates stable households, which in turn form the basis of a stable, governable populace. FF 35-37. The state respects an individual's choice to build a family with another and protects the relationship because it is so central a part of an individual's life. ”

“ The law in England, by which property can be kept in the same families for many years, has, perhaps, caused greater importance to be given in that country than in this to the insertion in deeds of settlement of a power of revocation and appointment to other uses. ”

“ The courts of this Nation shall have and exercise jurisdiction over all controversies arising out of or pertaining to property rights acquired in this Nation, and situated in the same, by noncitizens who have intermarried with citizens of this Nation, and by reason of such marriage secured rights and privileges in this Nation under which such property was acquired and accumulated by them. ”

“ But even if it be as appellees argue, that common law family partnership or other arrangements with different names can be so devised that the marital relationship is attended by the same powers and restrictions as those derived from the laws of the community property states, and that they are differently or more lightly taxed than community property interests, we find no lack of uniformity in the constitutional sense. ”

“ States which decline, even upon principles of comity, to recognize and enforce as to their own citizens, within their own borders, decrees of divorce rendered in other states, when the court rendering the same had jurisdiction over only one of the parties. ”

“ Under the common law,—which is the established and recognized rule of action in all of our States in the absence of a local statute by which a different rule is established,—a valid marriage is nothing more than a civil contract entered into between two persons capable of making contracts. ”

“ That where a state law, statutory or customary, gives to the citizens of the state, in an action or suit inter partes, the right to question at law the probate of a will or to assail probate in a suit in equity, the courts of the United States, in administering the rights of citizens of other states or aliens, will enforce such remedies. ”

“ But it was urged by the learned counsel who argued this cause for the defendant, that husband and wife, although allowed to live separately under a decree of separation a mensa et thoro, made by a State court having competent jurisdiction, are still so far one person, while the married relation continues to exist, that they cannot become at the same time citizens of different States, within the meaning of the Federal Constitution, and therefore the court below had no jurisdiction. ”

“ Subject to these conditions, each state has the right to regulate the marital status of its citizens, at least so far as to determine in what manner and by whom marriages may be solemnized, what shall be deemed the age of consent, what obligations are assumed, what property rights are created, for what causes divorces shall be granted, for what length of time the domicil of plaintiff shall have been acquired prior to the institution of the proceedings, and in what manner notice shall be given to the defendant. ”

“ But it was also true at common law that as, 'in point of fact, and agreeable to natural reason, free from artificial deductions, the husband and wife are distinct and individual persons when lands are granted to them as tenants in common, thereby treating them without any respect to their social union, they will hold by moieties, as other distinct and individual persons would do.' 1 Prest. ”

“ Miscellaneous Laws.—The property rights of husband and wife are practically equal, and either may buy, sell or mortgage real estate, other than the homestead, without the consent of the other. Among the grounds for a divorce are adultery, extreme cruelty, habitual drunkenness, gross neglect of duty and imprisonment for felony. ”

“ The legislature shall have no power to grant divorces, to change the names of individuals, or direct the sales of estates belonging to infants or other persons laboring under legal disabilities, by special legislation, but by general laws shall confer such powers on the courts of justice. ”

“ For, however derived, the very foundation of the community and its efficacious existence depends on the power of the husband, during the marriage, over the community, and his right, in the absence of fraud or express legislative restriction, to deal with the community and its assets as the owner thereof. ”