If your spouse goes back to the same behavior after you forgave it, Georgia lets the forgiven acts come back into your case.
The Rule
Brown v. Brown, 129 Ga. 246 (1907), states it: “Condonation is a conditional forgiveness of all antecedent acts of cruelty, and such acts as may have been condoned will not be revived except by fresh acts of cruelty.”
The last five words are the catch. Without a fresh act, nothing is revived. In Brown itself the wife lost on exactly that point. Her husband had cursed her and threatened to whip her about a year before she left, and she went on living with him for that year. The Georgia Supreme Court affirmed a nonsuit, describing the outburst as one “which had been condoned by a year’s cohabitation.”
A Modern Example
In Wood v. Wood, 283 Ga. 8 (2008), a husband committed adultery during the parties’ first marriage. They divorced, remarried, and divorced again. He argued that by remarrying him his wife had condoned the earlier adultery, so evidence of it should have been kept out of the second case.
The Georgia Supreme Court disagreed. Because there was evidence he committed further adulterous acts during the second marriage, those fresh acts revived the earlier ones “as admissible evidence.”
The Limit
Revival cannot rescue a claim that was never good. In Barden v. Barden, 230 Ga. 663 (1973), a husband’s evidence of cruel treatment was too thin to make out the ground at all. Because of that, “the attempt to revive the ground of cruel treatment by showing fresh acts of cruelty since the condonation by the parties must fail.”
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This post is a quick overview of the law and is not intended as legal advice. Please feel free to contact our office for a consultation if you have questions about this or any other legal aspects regarding your case!