I hope this is a decent place to ask this question. If not I will gladly delete it, and my apologies.
I’m doing some family research and came across a divorce ruling a few generations back (in 1912).
In the first article I found, the husband sued the wife for divorce, alleging that she had abandoned him and the children and run off god knows where.
In the second article, which was really more a brief about the ruling, it said the wife was given custody of the children and the husband was “enjoined from entering into marriage for two years.”
Does anybody know what a plausible reason would be for that ruling? I mean the custody thing I understand, children were usually given to the mother, but why the injunction against marrying again?
Contracts in restraint of marriage are void upon grounds of public policy, and so are conditions in wills in restraint of marriage
-State v. Johnson, 52 Ind. 197, 206 (1875)
The general rule in US legal history is that neither individuals nor states are allowed to interfere with a person's ability to marry with a few exceptions.
Prior to Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), individuals/states were allowed to interfere with interracial marriage. Prior to Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___ (2015), individuals/states were allowed to interfere with same sex marriage. States can also obviously interfere with marriage to prevent certain social harms, such as by preventing child marriage or preventing polygamy.
I'm going to assume that none of those issues were at play in this divorce decree, not the least of which because a 2 year restriction on marriage makes no sense if any were.
With that out of the way, State v. Johnson is just the earliest Indiana case I can find that mentions that rule, and the case itself cites a law journal to get it so it may very well be the first Indiana case in which the rule was mentioned. However, the rule is universal in all US states and at least as old as the US.
Because of this, there would not have been any Indiana statute permitting the divorce judge to make such a ruling, nor would any divorce agreement that the parties reached voluntarily be valid. In short, whatever restriction that divorce decree contained on the husband's ability to remarry was invalid and unenforceable.
That being said, Tipton County appears to be a very rural county with a small population of about 17,000 people according to the 1910 census.
We can only speculate why the judge gave the ruling that he did, but it seems likely that small town politics were probably both the reason why you would see such an order in the first place and why it would have been enforced (if in fact it was). Had your relative moved outside of Tipton County there is no chance of another judge having enforced that restriction.
Likely to allow time for reconciliation. Today a court will not enter a judgment of divorce in most western jurisdictions unless the Parties agree there is no reasonable chance of reconciliation.
See e.g. Cause if Action pleading elements for divorce in NJ:USA.