Alimony was consequently regarded as enforcement of the husband's duty to support his wife while the marriage subsisted. Clayton v. Clayton, 231 Md. 74, 76, 188 A.2d 550 (1963); Minner v. Minner, 19 Md. App. 154, 155, 156 n. 3, 310 A.2d 208 (1973) (citing 1 Blackstone's Commentaries on the Law, ch. 15, at 189 (Gavit ed.)). In 1841, the Legislature authorized courts of chancery to grant divorces a vinculo matrimonii and award alimony therein.
In 1980, following up on dicta by this Court in a 1973 case suggesting that the alimony statute construed by the courts to impose a support obligation only on husbands was unconstitutional, the General Assembly amended the statute to allow either spouse to recover alimony. See 1980 Md. Laws, ch. 575; Minner v. Minner, 19 Md.App. 154, 310 A.2d 208 (1973). In 1981, in Condore, supra, 289 Md. 516, 425 A.2d 1011, the Court of Appeals held that the ERA rendered the common-law doctrine of necessaries unconstitutional.
The presumption of dominance in a marriage by the husband was erased, Bell v. Bell, 38 Md. App. 10, 379 A.2d 419 (1977), cert. denied, 282 Md. 729 (1978), and the right of the husband to claim alimony was born. See Minner v. Minner, 19 Md. App. 154, 310 A.2d 208 (1973). Article 46 of the Declaration of Rights was ratified by the General Election, November 7, 1972.
Under the questioned law, the appellant himself was indicted, tried and convicted. He is under sentence according to that law. This case bears no resemblance to the situations we were dealing with in Minner v. Minner, 19 Md. App. 154, 310 A.2d 208, and Colburn v. Colburn, 20 Md. App. 346, 316 A.2d 283. In both of those cases, husbands had been ordered to pay counsel fees and alimony.
See United States v. Raines, 362 U.S. 17, 21-22 (1960). We have announced our accord with this principle and applied it. Colburn v. Colburn, 20 Md. App. 346, 354 (1974); Minner v. Minner, 19 Md. App. 154, 158 (1973). Mules supplies no valid reason to depart from it.
"The best teaching of judicial experience admonishes us not to entertain constitutional questions in advance of the strictest necessity." Minner v. Minner, 19 Md. App. 154, 158 quoting Wilkins v. State, 16 Md. App. 587, 598; see also United States v. Raines, 362 U.S. 17, 21. Intriguing as it appears, the issue must await determination until it comes to us on surer footing.
" Husband urges that the provisions of ยง 5 (a) offend the constitutional guarantee, relying on Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677. Assuming arguendo that the question is properly before us, Minner v. Minner, 19 Md. App. 154, is dispositive of it. The rationale of Minner is found in our "* * * accord with the two rules which the Supreme Court has stated it feels bound to follow in its consideration of the constitutionality of a statute: `one, never to anticipate a question of constitutional law in advance of the necessity of deciding it; the other never to formulate a rule of constitutional law broader than is required by the precise facts to which it is to be applied.' Liverpool, New York Philadelphia S.S. Co. v. Commissioners of Emigration, 113 U.S. 33, 39. In United States v. Raines, 362 U.S. 17, 21, the Court said that `[k]indred to these rules is the rule that one will not be heard to attack the statute on the ground that impliedly it might also be taken as applying to other persons or other situations in which its application might be unconstitutional.