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Abstracts Of Recent Cases, T. E. P.

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Anderson V. Mart [Dissent], Jesse W. Carter

Jesse Carter Opinions

A divorced wife was entitled to recover support payments from the estate of her former husband. Alimony payments agreed to as an inseparable part of a property settlement did not terminate on the death of the husband.

Transfers Of Joint Property In Contemplation Of Death: A Call For Immediate Statutory Revision, L. Hart Wright

Michigan Law Review

For years the Tax Court sided with the government and the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in asserting that the contemplation-of-death provision of the estate tax act was sufficiently elastic to include the tax concept of ownership reflected in the joint-property provision of the same act. The alliance between those tribunals on this point was recently broken, however, when the Tax Court shifted to the competing view supported by taxpayers and the appellate court for the Ninth Circuit. It now believes that the two provisions mentioned above are complete strangers even though at one time these two were …

Foust V. Foust [Dissent], Jesse W. Carter

Jesse Carter Opinions

Because the conclusion that the parties intended a separation agreement to be merged in an annulment decree was inescapable, the wife's writ of execution upon the husband's property for failure to make support payments was proper.

Common Law Marriage-A Legal Anachronism

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Civil Procedure And Evidence—Injunctions—Foreign Divorce Actions, Robert Miller

Buffalo Law Review

Rosenbaum v. Rosenbaum, 309 N.Y. 371, 130 N.E. 2d 902 (1955).

Domestic Relations -- 1956 Tennessee Survey, William J. Harbison

Vanderbilt Law Review

Only one reported opinion dealt with the subject of adoption during the survey period.' In this case the petitioners had contracted with the Department of Public Welfare to keep the subject child on a foster-home-care basis. When the Department sought custody of the child from them, however, they had become very attached to her and refused to surrender custody. Pursuant to the statute then in effect, they filed a petition to the county court to adopt the child. The petition was denied, and on appeal the decision was affirmed. Immediately thereafter, petitioners filed the present suite in chancery, seeking to …

Woods V. Security-First Nat'l Bank, Jesse W. Carter

Jesse Carter Opinions

Where plaintiff alleged that defendants were not entitled to distribution because the deceased made an oral agreement with plaintiff, plaintiff was entitled to one-half of the deceased's property based on res judicata.

Messenger V. Messenger [Dissent], Jesse W. Carter

Jesse Carter Opinions

Provisions for monthly support payments to a former wife were not subject to modification because they were an integral and inseparable part of the property settlement agreement that was incorporated by reference into the divorce decree.

Community Property, William H. Mays

Washington Law Review

Covers cases on tort liability and conflict of laws.

Domestic Relations, David Wayne Gittinger

Washington Law Review

Covers cases on divorce—jurisdiction to grant custody and alimony in Washington.

Support Rights And Duties Between Husband And Wife, Monrad G. Paulsen

Vanderbilt Law Review

According to the common law a husband was entitled to his wife's earnings and most of her personal property in addition to the pleasure of her company and services in the home. These advantages have been considered the quid pro quo for the man's duty of support. Today, because of legislation, most of a husband's legal control over the income and means of his wife is gone. If a husband's duty to support is to be grounded in a reciprocal benefit to him, that benefit is derived almost wholly from the wife's obligation to be a wife and to live …

The Law Of Adoption: Ancient And Modern, Leo A. Huard

Vanderbilt Law Review

Sir Henry Maine tells us that adoption is one of the oldest and most widely employed of legal fictions. Without it, he asserts, society would scarcely have escaped its swaddling clothes. It commanded the approval of the greater number of archaic societies and has proven to be the most perdurable of all artificial relationships designed to prolong the continuity of family existence.

The family is the basic group of most primitive societies. Those who were related by blood naturally gravitated to each other to form this first ring of society's organization. In the same way successively higher organizational units were …

Divorce Litigation And The Welfare Of The Family, John B. Bradway

Vanderbilt Law Review

In a recent article Chief Justice Warren, writing on the topic "The Law and The Future," reminds us that "Some of the defects in our system are inherited; others keep creeping in. Justice, like freedom, needs constant viligance." There are some who believe that an inspection of the modern orthodox adversary divorce procedure will reveal one or more of those defects. It is the purpose of this article to attempt such an inspection.

There is nothing novel in the suggestion that divorce is a controversial subject. Its repercussions impinge on many of the social and physical sciences; but its contact …

The Law Of Infants' Marriages, Robert Kingsley

Vanderbilt Law Review

Just as the law requires, for ordinary contracts, that a party thereto must have reached an age sufficient to give him reasonable discretion, so, in connection with the contract of marriage, the law has required that the parties be not too immature. It must be remembered, however, that the word "infant" is not one of fixed meaning: when used with reference to ordinary contracts, and without further qualification, it usually means a person under twenty-one years of age; but in the field of criminal law the dividing line between "infancy" and "adult" responsibility is fixed at a lesser age (14 …

Family Responsibility In Tort, William J. Harbison

Vanderbilt Law Review

At common law an unmarried woman occupied no special status as far as tort liability was concerned, and the same rules and standards of responsibility applied to her as to society generally. Since marriage imposed upon a woman a very extensive disability, however, there developed a number of special rules concerning tort responsibility of the married woman.

Marriage did not impose upon the wife any special or peculiar liability for wrongful acts committed by her husband at common law, and, except in certain instances hereafter noted, she is not thus liable today. It is true that since the enactment of …

Bankruptcy From A Family Law Perspective, G. Stanley Joslin

Vanderbilt Law Review

The points at which family interests are involved in the usual bankruptcy proceeding are many. Some are quite obvious, as dower rights of the wife, alimony claims, or intra-family concealments. Others are less conspicuous but no less potent, as exclusion of relatives and spouses from certain rights, post-bankruptcy inheritances, cryptic exemption rights or evidentiary obligations. The scope here will not be limited to the traditional academic "Family Law" concept but will include that wider sphere where husbands, wives, and children are actually and vitally concerned in a bankruptcy involving one of them. Not only are the advantageous rights to be …

Marriage In The Conflict Of Laws, Charles W. Taintor, Ii

Vanderbilt Law Review

It must first be recognized that three different types of problems are raised in this field by what purport to be marriages: problems concerning the creation of the relationship of man and wife; those concerning the method whereby the parties signify their consents to the assumption of the relationship; and those concerning the legal protection accorded to claims arising therefrom. These involve, respectively, the status, the ceremony, and the incidents' of marriage.

It has often been said or assumed in the past that the laws of the domicile or domiciles of the parties at the time of the ceremony govern …

The Law Of Divorce And The Problem Of Marriage Stability, Max Rheinstein

Vanderbilt Law Review

In the mind of the American public, the topic of divorce has come to play a conspicuous role. The present symposium constitutes a part of an extensive debate which is carried on not only among experts but in which the general public also has shown a lively interest. The matter touches upon the lives of large numbers of people and it excites widespread curiosity and emotional reactions. The common attitude is one of uneasiness. The feeling is widespread that there are too many divorces, that the stability of family life has seriously declined, and that something ought to be done …

Domestic Relations--Desertion--Necessary Intent To Abandon, H. R. A. Jr.

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Law Of Domestic Relations (Survey Of Virginia Case Law - 1955), William A. Hunt

William and Mary Review of Virginia Law

No abstract provided.

Torts - Parent - Child Action By Child For Indirect Interference With Family Relationship, William R. Jentes S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Five minor children sued for the loss of their mother's support, care and affection which resulted from the defendant's negligent injury of the mother in an auto accident. Defendant moved to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Held, motion denied. A minor child has a cause of action for damages resulting from an indirect, negligent interference with his rights in the family relationship. Scruggs v. Meredith, (D.C. Hawaii 1955) 134 F. Supp. 86.8.

Creation Of Joint Rights Between Husband And Wife In Personal Property: I, R. Bruce Townsend

Michigan Law Review

Joint ownership of personal property in recent years has become a common practice--one to which husband and wife are especially addicted. The topic is worthy of more than academic concern as demonstrated by the public use of joint titles in the acquisition of all kinds of personal assets, particularly investment securities. A casual conversation with almost any banker would disclose that a very high percentage of accounts owned by married people are held jointly with their spouses. The current popularity of dual ownership, for example, is reflected in the marketing policy of the United States Treasury in the sale of …

Family Responsibilty Under The American Poor Laws: Ii, Daniel R. Mandelker

Michigan Law Review

No substantive statutory provision fulfills the purpose for which it was enacted unless fair and efficient procedures are provided for its enforcement. Under the Elizabethan family responsibility law, enforcement was confined to the parish justices of the peace, who at that time exercised both administrative and judicial functions. The blending of administrative and judicial functions no longer being the rule in American local government, practically all of the American family responsibility statutes provide for some judicial procedure by which the support duty may be enforced. The basic issue with which the courts have been concerned in applying these statutory remedies …

Twenty Years Of West Virginia Marriage And Divorce Law, Clyde L. Colson

West Virginia Law Review

Almost twenty years have passed since the publication of a series of articles dealing with the substantive law of marriage and divorce in West Virginia. Most of the marriage and divorce cases decided during this time involve no more than the application of already well-established principles. Such cases will not be discussed in this article. There have been enough new developments in the field, however, both by legislation and by court decision, to make worthwhile this effort to bring the articles up to date.

Divorce--Wife's Right To Obtain Alimony After Valid Ex Parte Divorce, G. H. W.

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Family Responsibilty Under The American Poor Laws: I, Daniel R. Mandelker

Michigan Law Review

Ever since the enactment of the statute quoted above, first passed in 1597 as part of the original Elizabethan Poor Law, the concept of family responsibility has been linked with the public relief of the poor. Today, more than three-and-a-half centuries later, the basic, residual program of poor relief has survived in the statutes of every American jurisdiction, and practically all the states still have family responsibility provisions based on the English model. Although some jurisdictions have abandoned the family responsibility requirement, the tendency in recent years seems to be toward strengthening the law where it exists.

In spite of …

Descent And Distribution - Ancestral Property - Exclusion Of Next Of Kin Other Than Half Bloods, George F. Lynch

Michigan Law Review

The decedent died intestate owning land which he had inherited from his father. His only next of kin were four blood aunts and uncles on his mother's side, and three blood aunts and uncles on his father's side. The paternal aunts and uncles contended that the land descended to them alone by virtue of a section of the Alabama code, which provides: "There is no distinction made between the whole and the half blood in the same degree, unless the inheritance came to the intestate by descent, devise or gift, from or of some one of his ancestors; in which …

Domestic Relations—Abandonment, Raymond Ettlinger

Buffalo Law Review

Aghinides v. Aghinides, 308 N. Y. 530, 127 N. E. 2d 323 (1955).

Domestic Relations—Medical Care Of Children, Dawn Girard

Buffalo Law Review

In re Seiferth, Jr., 309 N. Y. 80, 127 N. E. 2d 820 (1955).