Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 59, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 November 1909 — DIVORCEE MUST SUPPORT CHILD [ARTICLE]

DIVORCEE MUST SUPPORT CHILD

Even If Decree Awards Custody to Mother Bringing Suit DECISION BY AN INDIANA JUDGE Jurist In Writing His Opinion States Father In the Case Would Have Done Better Had He Paid For Little Girl’s Keep Instead of Attempting to Avoid Doing So by Hiring Lawyers •nd Resorting to Legal Proceedings. Indianapolis, Nov. 5. —A husband divorced for his own misconduct, and deprived of the custody of his children, must support them or he may be punished for abandoning them and “contributing to their delinquency.” The Indiana appellate court so decided in affirming a judgment of the Elkhart juvenile court, from which Clarence L. Spade had taken an appeal. The decision reads: “It is shown that the appellant is an able-bodied man able to labor and support his helpless, dependent child. “If the appellant had exended his energies and money for the support of his infant child, as becometh a father, which he has expended to defeat the Order requiring him to do his duty by his child, it would have been to his credit, instead of to his everlasting shame.” The juvenile court adjudged Spade guilty of contributing to the delinquency of Bernice Spade and ordered him to pay a fine of SIOO. The concluding paragraph of the ruling says: “Parents are required by law to maintain their own offspring. They can not cast off the obligation by its neglect or by any other wrong. Commonly where this duty to a child exists connected therewith is the right to its services. But a father, who, by ill-doing, forfeits his claim to its services and custody does not thereby free himself from his own duty of support.”