Washington: A US Court awarded a married man $750,000 after his divorce with his wife proved his partner had been cheating on him with a co-worker.
Kevin Howard watched his life fall apart when his 12 years of marriage ended, on;y did he later learned that his wife had been cheating on him with a coworker, NDTV reports.
North Carolina judge agreed that the other man was to blame for the marriage’s failure, and awarded Howard $750,000, US media reported on Thursday.
“She had originally told me that she wanted a divorce because I work too much, wasn’t around to be there,” Howard told, but only after hiring a private detective, Howard discovered his wife had been having an affair with a work colleague, whom he had met before.
“He came to my house and ate dinner with us. We shared stories, we talked about personal lives,” Howard said.
After the truth behind his marriage’s failure was revealed, Howard filed a lawsuit before a judge in Greenville under an “alienation of affection” law dating from the 1800s, an era when wives were considered their husband’s property.
The law is still in effect in only five other US states — Hawaii, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Dakota and Utah that allows one member of a couple to sue another person whom they believe to be the cause of the breakup of their marriage due to “wrongful or malicious acts”.
“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 questions everyone’s liability,” Howard told in his interview.
That same year, a North Carolina court awarded $9 million to a woman who accused her husband’s lover of breaking up their 33-year marriage.