Lanbuk on the Law of the Family: cases
34 cases, each with its facts, the issue, what was held and the principle.
Posted By lanbuk.com
- Hyde v Hyde (1866)A polygamous or potentially polygamous marriage may be a marriage. It is not a marriage for the divorce and maintenance machinery built for monogamy.
- Baindail v Baindail (1946)A potentially polygamous marriage is a marriage that occupies the parties' status. A later monogamous ceremony with a different person is void.
- Williams v Macfoy (1937)A promise to marry may be oral, but the plaintiff's word alone is not enough. Damages reflect the real loss, not a penalty.
- Macfoy v Reffell (1942)A promise to marry given in return for sexual intercourse is illegal. Saying it again, after the child is born, does not make it enforceable.
- Taylor v Davies (1950)An offer to perform, refused before action, answers the claim. Sierra Leone courts have been slow to give substantial general damages for the loss of the marria
- Fender v Mildmay (1937)Public policy forbids a promise by a married person to marry someone else. It does not forbid a promise once the court has said the marriage will be dissolved.
- Berry v Da Costa (1866)General damages for breach of promise include injured feelings, wounded pride, and the loss of the status of marriage.
- De Reneville v De Reneville (1948)Voidness needs no decree, though a decree is useful. Voidability needs a decree, asked for by a party, in the lifetime of both.
- Baxter v Baxter (1948)Wilful refusal and incapacity are about intercourse, not about children. A just excuse, such as illness, negatives wilful refusal. Malingering does not.
- Greaves v Greaves (1870)Under a statute that uses the words 'knowingly and wilfully', want of banns or a licence avoids the marriage only where both parties have that knowledge.
- Russell v Russell (1897)The conduct must be grave and weighty. Injury to mental health is enough. A single loss of temper is not a course of treatment.
- Evans v Evans (1790)Cruelty is a protection of health and safety, not a remedy for an unhappy marriage.
- Boyle v Boyle (1964)Constructive desertion is not any unpleasantness that leads the other spouse to leave. It is conduct that drives the other out.
- Macaulay v Macaulay (1967)Sierra Leone has not invented a local, looser definition. 'Treated with cruelty' means a course of conduct, not an isolated act in the heat of temper.Read the full judgment
- Churchman v Churchman (1945)Connivance is an absolute bar. A spouse who consents to the adultery cannot then complain of it.
- Travers v Holley (1953)Reciprocity: a foreign decree is recognised if the foreign court took jurisdiction on a ground on which this court would have taken it.
- R v Jackson (1891)Consortium is not enforced by force. There is no right of chastisement and no right of confinement.
- Best v Samuel Fox & Co Ltd (1952)The action for loss of consortium is an anomaly in favour of the husband. It is not a general right of both spouses.
- Demby v Bishop (1950)A Christian marriage imports monogamy. The court will not give a remedy that treats a second customary union as a marriage he is entitled to defend.
- Wilson v Genet and Wilson (1968)Section 20 creates a tort. Separation goes to the amount. It does not abolish the claim. The wife has no equivalent action.
- Elba v Elba (1967)A maintenance order under the 1888 Act depends on desertion. A change of address that she accepted is not desertion, and desertion is not found merely to make a
- Balfour v Balfour (1919)An arrangement for the household is not a contract unless the parties show that they meant it to be one. Property rights and maintenance statutes are a differen
- Bright v Bright's Executors (1957)Property she acquired before 1933 was still subject to the old law for a disposition between the living. A will made after the Act disposed of it without him.
- Pettitt v Pettitt (1970)An express agreement is conclusive. Without one, the court infers intention from who paid and from the presumptions of advancement and resulting trust.
- Gissing v Gissing (1971)The trust follows the intention the parties' payments reveal. There is no family-assets rule that divides everything equally.
- National Provincial Bank Ltd v Ainsworth (1965)Occupation during the marriage is an incident of consortium. It is not an estate in the land.
- Anoff v Fofanah (1967)No parent has an absolute claim. Welfare decides, and a parent's wishes are relevant only through the child's interests.
- Cole v Cole (1898)The extreme view: the marriage selects the general law for the whole of life, including succession.
- Smith v Smith (1924)The marriage governs the marriage. It does not choose the law for every later transaction.
- Coleman v Shang (1959)The excluding statute must be specific. Manner of life after the marriage may matter to the construction. Status of the children follows the marriage. Their per
- Bamgbose v Daniel (1955)A valid polygamous marriage produces legitimate children. A statute is not read as excluding them unless it says so.
- Savage v Macfoy (1909)The decision treats polygamy as simply unlawful for a non-native.
- Ginesi v Ginesi (1948)Adultery is not found on a mere balance. Where the act was not seen, the inference must be fair and the conclusion necessary.
- Wellesley-Cole v Wellesley-Cole (1968)Because the Act requires the court to be satisfied, a cruelty case is not decided as an ordinary civil claim. The standard the Court of Appeal stated sits betweRead the full judgment