Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 239, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 October 1912 — Can’t Buy Marital Bliss [ARTICLE]

Can’t Buy Marital Bliss

Felicity Is Not to Be Measured by Money or Bulk Like Commercial Products. * Salem. Ore. —Declaring that “connubial bliss Is not to be estimated at a price of so much per ton, or yard, or acre,” the supreme court, in an opinion by Justice Burnet, has affirmed the lower court of Multnomah county In the case of Lizzie C. Davison, appellant, against John H. Davidson, respondent. ( Mrs. Davidson xbrcught suit to set aside deeds to property In Portland amounting to $33,050. She alleged that she, as a milliner, and he, as a policeman, started on their wedding journey together, deciding not to keep house, but each to assist In promoting the financial welfare of the family. She alleges he was peevish, irritable, and that married life was not harmonious. To promote harmony, she deeded to him property valued at more than $23,000, and that it was done with the sole hope that the busband would discontinue his “mental cruelty,” as she alleged his actions constituted.

The court holds that connubial happiness “cannot be made a subject of barter between the two spouses, and that as far as that Is concerned, if she, of her own free will and accord, although with the hope of Inducing a different course of conduct toward her on the part of the defendant, freely gave him her property It must stand as the court finds it We cannot relieve her of the consequences of her own deliberate acts and deeds.”