Mr. and Mrs. D were married
for seven years. During this time, Mrs. D began to drink more and more.
Eventually Mr. D got tired of it and filed for divorce.
Mr. D admitted that other
than her habitually drunkenness, Mrs. D was a good wife and cleaned and
cooked and did wifey stuff.
Mrs. D argued that Mr. D knew
she was a drunk before he married her, and that in order to obtain a
divorce, Mr. D would have to show that Mrs. D's drinking made it
"impossible to endure."
Mrs. D also argued that Mr.
D was also an alcoholic.
The Trial Court denied the
divorce.
The Trial Court found that
under Delaware law at the time, only an innocent party could ask for a fault
divorce.
In this case, the Court
found that Mr. D was also a drunk (albeit not as much as Mrs. D).
Therefore he wasn't completely innocent. While he wasn't solely at
fault for the marital break-up, his own drinking was a partial fault
(aka recrimination).
Also, part of the reason
Mrs. D. was a drunk was that Mr. D kept buying her liquor (aka convivance).
Btw, the Court didn't
mention it, but they probably could have also found that Mr. D. condoned
Mrs. D.'s actions because he continued living with her after he learned
she was a drunk (aka condonation),
and since he had known about her drinking problem for seven years, he
was also barred from bringing an action because of laches.
The four common-law
defenses to fault are recrimination, convivance, condonation, and laches.
The Trial Court found that
under Delaware law at the time, no-fault divorce could only be granted if one party commits
acts so serious as to render further cohabitation by the injured and
innocent party unreasonable.
In this case, Mrs. D
continued to perform household duties, so even though they were somewhat
incompatible, there should still be able to live with one another.
The drunkenness didn't go
to the "essence of the marriage."
Basically, this case said that
if you want a fault divorce, you
have to be an injured and innocent party, there can be no contributory fault (aka recrimination). If you want a no-fault divorce, you have to establish that things have gotten
so bad that it would be unreasonable to make you continue living there.
