(A) Most frequently this is used in a fault divorce as a defense. If one person approved, whether implied or explicitly, the activities of the other, it can constitute a ground for a fault, for example, a husband did not object to his wife’s adultery and thus should not be able to claim infidelity. (B) A term used in the canon law. It is a forgiveness by the husband of his wife, or by a wife of her husband, of adultery committed, with an implied condition that the injury shall not be repeated, and that the other party shall be treated with conjugal kindness. 2. It may be express or implied, as, if a husband, knowing of his wife’s infidelity, cohabit with her. 3. Condonation is not, for many rea sons, held so strictly against a wife as against a husband. As all condonations, by operation of law, are expressly or impliedly conditional, it follows that the effect is taken off by the repetition of misconduct; and cruelty revives condoned adultery. 4. In New York, an act of cruelty alone, on the part of the husband, does not revive condoned adultery, to entitle the wife to a divorce. 5. Where the parties have separate beds, there must, in order to found condonation, be something of matrimonial intercourse presumed; it does not rest merely on the wife’s not. withdrawing herself. 3 Eccl. R. 341, n.; 2 Paige, R. 108. 6. Condonation is a bar to a sentence of divorce.
Law Dictionary – Alternative Legal Definition
The conditional remission or forgiveness, by one of the married parties, of a matrimonial offense committed by the other, and which would constitute a cause of divorce; the condition being that the offense shall not be repeated. See Pain v. Pain, 37 Mo. App. 115; Betz v. Betz, 25 N. Y. Super. Ct 696; Thomson v. Thomson, 121 Cal. 11, 53 Pac. 403; Harnett v. Harnett, 55 Iowa, 45, 7 N. W. 394; Eggerth v. Eggerth, 15 Or. 626, 16 Pac. 650; Turnbull v. Turnbull, 23 Ark. 615; Odom v. Odom, 36 Ga. 318; Poison v. Poison, 140 Ind. 310, 39 N. E. 498. The term is also sometimes applied to forgiveness of a past wrong, fault injury, or breach of duty in other relations, as, for example, in that of master and servant Leatherberry v. Odell (C. C.) 7 Fed. 648.