SELFISH INTENTIONS - K-REx - Kansas State University

possibility that one of her sons from her first marriage was illegitimate leads one to believe that
the community judged her actions unfavorably. This case provided an example of a case in
which the community did not rally around the woman. Even though these cases are different
they are similarly unusual because the women came out of the divorce with property.
The usual situation of women petitioning for divorce were women who were desperate to
get out of their marriage. After a careful examination of divorces in Clay and Riley County,
Kansas, one can see that the majority of the cases did not deal with women seeking a property
settlement, but the women were simply trying to escape from a troublesome marriage. In Clay
County in 1883, the Court heard sixteen divorce cases. Of these sixteen cases, women petitioned
the Court in fifteen of them. The primary reason listed for these divorces was abandonment with
seven of the cases listing that as the grounds for the case. Three of the cases outlined habitual
drunkenness as the grounds and two of the cases used extreme cruelty as the motivation for
filing. In the one case in which the husband petitioned, he did so under the grounds of
abandonment. These cases illustrate that most women were desperately looking to escape their
marriage and it seems reasonable to assume that most did not do so for the reason of securing
their property. When in a troublesome situation, women used the courts if possible to provide
legal relief from the marriage.
But, whether judges liked it or not, men and women seeking to end troublesome
marriages could use the divorce laws of Kansas to their own purposes. In addition, as the three
cases in Clay County illustrate, the divorce laws combined with Kansas’ liberal provisions for
married women’s property rights could be used advantageously by women who owned property.
District judges, statisticians, and the public itself could wring their hands over the seeming
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