- By Talib Khan
- Fri, 04 Oct 2019 01:17 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
New Delhi | Jagran News Desk: A man in the US had the last laugh after a North Carolina judge agreed upon his plea accusing another man of his marriage failure and divorce. The judge also awarded the victim man $750,000, US media reported on Thursday.
Kevin Howard has been falling apart since his wife asked him to divorce her as the couple was married for the last 12 years. But to Kevin’s surprise, he later discovered that his wife had actually been cheating on him with a co-worker.
"She had originally told me that she wanted a divorce because I work too much, wasn't around to be there," Howard told local television station WITN, according to news agency AFP.
But soon after hiring a private detective he came to know through the detective that his wife had been having an affair with a work colleague, whom he had met before also and was a common friend of the couple, as reported by AFP.
Opening up about the man who Kevin thinks is responsible for his marriage failure said, "he came to my house and ate dinner with us. We shared stories, we talked about personal lives," Kevin said.
After he came to know about the affair, he turned to courts and filed a lawsuit against his wife and her lover before a judge in Greenville under the ‘alienation of affection’ law, which dates back from the 1800s. The law was from the time when wives were considered to be the property of her husband.
The alienation of affection law permits one member of a couple to file a lawsuit against another person whom they think is the reason for the breakup or divorce due to ‘malicious and wrongful acts’, according to North Carolina’s Vavonese Law Firm. The law is still in effect in only five states -- Hawaii, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Utah -- of the United States of America.
"I filed the case because I feel that it's very important that people understand that the sanctity of marriage is important, especially in this day and age when people question everyone's morals, people question everyone's liability," Howard told WITN as quoted by news agency AFP.
Also Read: ‘I don’t even want you to go to jail’: US man hugs cop who shot his brother dead
According to Vavonese, more than 200 cases based on "alienation of affection" are filed every year in North Carolina.
Earlier in 2019, a North Carolina court awarded $9 million to a woman after she accused her husband’s lover of the reason behind the breakup of their marriage after 33-years.
