Subject_1 HUSBAND and WIFE. Subject_2 DIVISION III.
Mutual Duties betwixt Husband and Wife.
Subject_3 SECT. I.
Husband bound to aliment and provide for his Wife.
Lady Lenox v. Lord Lovat
Date: 23 March 1579 Case No. No 92.
During the dependence of a process of divorce for impotency, altho' the pursuit was at the wife's instance, and the husband offered to receive her home, the Lords found aliment due to her by her husband.
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The Lady Lenox, the spouse of umquhile the Lord Lovat, and daughter to the Earl of Athole, pursued her husband before the Commissaries of Edinburgh, for separation and divorcement, because of his inability and frigidity, so that he was not able to have carnal dealings with her; et pendente lite coram commissariis, she meaned her by supplication before the Lords, and desired her expenses to be modified to her in the mean time, and her sustentation off my Lord her husband. It was first alleged, that the Lords were not judges competent, because the principal cause of divorcement being intented before the Commissaries, the accessory of the expenses ought to be decreeted before the same Judges, quia accessorium sequitur naturam principalis. The whole allegeance was repelled by the Lords, because they had found them Judges in sundry causes. Then it was alleged; that the Lady should have no expenses, because she was the pursuer before the Commissaries, and my Lord offered to receive her as a wife, and adhere unto her; and offered him to prove the contrary of her summons, that he was potent and able, et sic causa fuit ex parte mulieris. To this was answered, quod super pendente lite, she ought to have her expenses off him, quia de jure Scotiæ, maritus est dominus omnium bonorum, and unto the time the sentence of divorcement was given, she could have nothing by him.——The Lords pronounced by interlocutor, that pendente lite, she ought to have her expenses, and so modified to her, per modum provisionis, the sum of L. 400 to live upon.
