Saturday, March 20, 2010

AN UNFRIENDLY DIVORCE

My husband’s maternal grandparents, Bird Ella Estes and Linton Appleby Hobdy, ran away and married on November 27, 1906, in Miles, Runnels County, Texas. I had searched for this information for years and finally found it in the last place I would have thought to look—their divorce file.

Less than five years after the elopement, in El Centro, Imperial County, California, that union shattered, and I was fortunate to be able to order a complete record of their rancorous divorce.

There are marriages made in Heaven, and these two people had approached it from the opposite direction. From their file, it is fairly obvious they should never have taken the plunge and further shows that neither one of them acted as well as they could have.
Bird left Linton after what was obviously a heated argument in 1911. He filed suit on the grounds of desertion nearly two years later, stating Bird left “without any sufficient cause or any reason and against his will and without his consent.” Although he didn’t demand custody, he did ask for visitation rights and later for partial custody.

Bird counter-sued for “willful neglect.” The court file reflects the bickering that must have been a constant in their marriage. There may have been attempts at reconciliation during those months after the separation, but I imagine when Bird called it quits, there was no going back.

I knew Bird Hobdy very well. She passed away when I had been married to her grandson over six years, and I had met her two years before that. Bird was the family matriarch. We loved her, but she ruled with an iron hand and her word was law. One look at her photo, and you can’t miss that bulldog jaw that indicated she was the boss. It was with great amusement I noticed that in one of her responses in the divorce file she referred to herself as a “frail woman.”

Family opinion was that her son had accepted employment in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, to get as far away from her as possible. He didn’t marry until more than ten years after she died. He didn’t dare! During her life, she had squelched any matrimonial aspirations he might have had.

In the Final Decree Bird was granted attorney’s fees and $25.00 a month in permanent alimony. It appears she preferred permanent alimony over child support, which would have ended when their two children were grown.

Several months later Bird hauled Linton into court because he had never made a single payment. He proved he had never been properly served, and a new order was issued, although he must have known very well he owed the money.
In six months they were back in court again. He had paid the first four months, and stopped paying in the fifth month.

Back and forth they went. It was an extended game of, “Is too! Is not!” Bird claimed Linton never tried to see the children or even ask about their welfare; he claimed she refused to let him see his son and daughter. He stated he had never even seen his son, since Bird was pregnant when they separated. Bird said he never paid her any money; Linton claimed he handed her a check for $3.50 to buy their daughter shoes, and she tore it up in front of him. She said he skipped town to avoid court appearances; he claimed to be in a sanitarium for the treatment of tuberculosis and was still on crutches; Bird said he made it all up. He claimed he was only able to do light work; Bird said he was pulling down $60.00 a month working in a grocery store. Linton said Bird was making $100.00 a month working for the U.S. Postal Service; she admitted to $66.60. Linton had quitclaimed his interest in their home to Bird; Bird was receiving $20.00 a month rental from that house.
Linton’s primary reason for not paying Bird alimony was that he felt she would just give it to her family. He insisted he wanted to provide personally for the needs of his two children. However, when Bird (once again) took him to court asking for medical help for both the children, there is no evidence he ever complied.

Bird was a very self-sufficient woman and, even though the census records show she and her children did move in with her parents and younger brother, she had a good-paying job, a rental home, and raised both her children successfully, apparently completely by herself. My mother-in-law and her brother never had a good word to say about Linton, and they may have had good reason. It is entirely possible that Linton never saw his son, whether from his own choice or from Bird’s vindictiveness. Linton went on to a second, more stable marriage, and had another daughter.

Although there is no evidence he paid alimony of any significant amount, Linton once again went to court to reduce that alimony because of serious dental problems, which I find ironic, as both my mother-in-law and her brother had all their teeth pulled at any early age. That was one thing they could point to as being a legacy from their father.

Bird finally gave up on taking Linton to court for back alimony, but she wasn’t quite through. Linton died August 23, 1941. Less than three weeks later, Bird had a judgment against his estate for $7,750.00 representing nearly 26 years of unpaid alimony! He thwarted her once again, however. The judgment was denied because the original judgment was more than five years old, having been entered in 1915.

That must have been a blow to Bird, but she was able to comfort herself by no longer having to list her status as divorced. She had outlived Linton, and she felt justified to claim she was widowed for the rest of her life!

I am sure Linton felt he had been mistreated by Bird, but I think the man should have counted his blessings. They separated on the 4th of July, in El Centro, where it easily gets to be 112 degrees in the summer, and she was five months pregnant. Think it over. He gets into a fight with a lantern-jawed Texas-born pregnant woman, in the middle of summer in Imperial County. He was fortunate she only left him. He was lucky she didn’t kill him!

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