No. Georgia has squarely held that cruel treatment and desertion are not like conduct.
The Case
Blois v. Blois, 234 Ga. 475 (1975), settles it. A husband sued for divorce on the ground of cruel treatment. His wife opposed the divorce throughout, alleging that he was the one who had deserted her.
She asked the trial judge to charge the jury that “if you find that the plaintiff husband has legally deserted defendant wife for a period exceeding one year, you cannot award him a divorce. In other words, if both parties are guilty of committing acts which are grounds for divorce, a divorce cannot be granted.” The judge refused, and the jury granted the husband a divorce.
The Holding
The Georgia Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the second sentence of that request “clearly is not a correct statement of law.”
Its reasoning turns on how few grounds the bar actually names. OCGA 19-5-4 reaches adultery, desertion, cruel treatment and habitual intoxication. As the Court put it, “[i]f this were ‘like conduct’ then all four enumerated grounds for divorce would be ‘like conduct’ as to each other.”
The holding follows: “cruel treatment and desertion are not ‘like conduct’ . . . so as to prohibit the grant of a divorce.”
What to Do With Desertion Instead
Blois takes desertion away from you as a shield. It does not take it away as a sword.
Desertion is its own ground for divorce under OCGA 19-5-3(7), and the spouse who was left can plead it and ask for a divorce on it. What the wife in Blois could not do was use it to stop her husband’s separate claim.
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