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SUPREME
COURT OF MICHIGAN
204
Mich. 255; 169 N.W. 908; 1918 Mich. LEXIS 670; 11 A.L.R. 923
December 27, 1918, Decided
OPINION: FELLOWS, J. Plaintiff, a young farmer about 29
years old, lives in Berrien county. Defendant, a woman 31 years
old, resided in Chicago prior to her marriage to plaintiff. Plaintiff
files this bill to annul the marriage between the parties on the
ground of fraud in its procurement. … Without
detailing the testimony it will suffice to state that from a careful
perusal of this record we are convinced that the following facts
are established beyond peradventure: (1) That the parties were
married February 17, 1916; (2) That they had sustained illicit
relations prior to marriage; (3) That the day before the marriage
defendant came from Chicago to St. Joseph in this State, there
met plaintiff by appointment and there falsely represented that
she was pregnant by defendant, which representation was believed
by plaintiff who married her to so far as possible repair his wrong;
(4) That defendant was delivered of a full-term child March 6,
1916; (5) That said child was not begotten by plaintiff but was
the child of another man who was in the Philippines at the time
defendant charged plaintiff with its paternity, and that defendant
well knew this to be true; (6) That upon learning that the child
was a full-term child and could not be his, plaintiff repudiated
defendant and the spurious offspring and has not since lived or
cohabited with her.
We therefore have before us for solution the question of whether
a bill will lie to annul a marriage procured by the false representation
of the wife before marriage that she is pregnant by the man she
marries, which misrepresentation is known by her to be untrue,
but is believed by the husband and the marriage relation is contracted
in such belief, the parties theretofore having sustained illicit
relations, when it is established beyond question as a matter of
fact that the child was begotten by a stranger.
…
That this plaintiff has been defrauded, deceived and tricked into
this marriage we entertain no doubt. It is intolerable to believe
that he should be compelled to continue through life as the husband
of defendant, caring for, as his own, this bastard child of another,
with its constant reminder of his wife's perfidy before marriage,
because in attempting to right a supposed wrong he entered into
the contract of marriage. That a man may have a true parental affection
for the child that sprang from his own loins even though conceived
before marriage is natural; but, that he should have such affection
for one that sprang from the loins of another man and was foisted
upon him by a designing woman is unbelievable. It has been said
in many of the cases cited that one of the great purposes of marriage
is procreation. It is evident that a wife pregnant by another cannot
carry out that purpose and hence that purpose of marriage must
fail. All true, but there are other purposes of marriage beyond
the perpetuation of the species. One of the purposes is the maintenance
of the sacred institution called home. It has been said that there
are three parties to the contract of marriage, the two contracting
parties and the public. Can it be that a wise public policy requires
in the name of home the maintenance by the husband of an establishment
presided over by one who has deceived him as to the paternity of
the little one who daily sits at his board, who bears his name,
who will in the absence of testamentary disposition inherit his
property, the offspring of another, a stranger to his blood? Most
assuredly not. We do not palliate plaintiff's infraction of the
moral code. Society will visit its penalties upon him. We are not
the keepers of his conscience or the censors of his morals. We
can only administer the law, imposing penalties only that are imposed
by the law, granting relief only as the law affords relief. Under
the law this plaintiff is entitled to be relieved from this contract
of marriage, procured by fraud, and a fraud well calculated to
deceive under all the facts in the case, and which did deceive
the plaintiff and caused him to do the only thing an honorable
man could do after his transgression of the moral code with its
supposed result.
We do not overlook the claim most earnestly pressed by defendant's
counsel at the argument and in the brief that during the acquaintance
of the parties defendant informed plaintiff that she had had intercourse
with another. It is urged that this should have prompted more vigilance
on the part of plaintiff. We have already called attention to the
holdings of this court upon this subject, and certain facts to
which we shall presently refer will demonstrate that the circumstances
would readily prompt a reasonably prudent man to believe defendant's
claim as to the paternity of the child. If plaintiff was seeking
annulment of the marriage on the sole grounds of want of chastity
of his wife he could not successfully assert he had been defrauded
if he had knowledge on the subject before the marriage. Nor under
the authorities could he assert her want of chastity as grounds
of annulment, where he himself had been a party to her unchaste
conduct. The gist of the action here, the right to relief is based
upon the ground that she has falsely represented herself to be
pregnant by plaintiff, when as matter of fact she was pregnant
by another …
… The plaintiff might have been willing to protect the
woman with whom he had been intimate and who he supposed was pregnant
by him, even though she had been unchaste before he ever saw her,
but at the same time no right-thinking man would be willing to
take as wife a woman pregnant by another. |
