In re Dube
Supreme Court of New Hampshire
44 A.3d 556 (2012)
Eric Dube (plaintiff) filed for divorce on grounds of irreconcilable differences and then added a fault-based ground, claiming his wife Jeannie's (defendant) conduct had seriously injured his health; Jeannie countered that Eric's affair caused the marriage's breakdown, and Eric argued Jeannie had condoned the affair by agreeing to work through it. After learning of the affair, Jeannie threatened to kill Eric's family, doused and tried to ignite their home with gasoline, destroyed property, and chased Eric's father with an axe, resulting in her criminal conviction for arson and criminal mischief; the trial court granted the divorce on the basis of that conviction and imprisonment, and Jeannie appealed.
Whether a plaintiff who committed adultery may nonetheless obtain a fault-based divorce as the innocent party, based on the other spouse's later violent criminal conduct, when the plaintiff claims the adultery was condoned.