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Judicial discretion is probably nowhere more intimately connected with human relations, nor is it given freer rein, than in the field of domestic relations. Particularly is thtis true when applied to the question of alimony. The nature of judicial discretion, however, is such that the limits of its exercise cannot be fixed by definition, and it is the aim of this paper not to define, but to attempt to examine, the factors that tend to guide the discretion vested in the courts to determine the amount of alimony payable upon divorce. The material presented here is, in the main, the result of a study of over one hundred cases in which the exercise of judicial discretion as to alimony was subjected to appellate review. The cases were taken from the reports of the decisions of appellate courts throughout the country during the year preceding this study, supplemented by representative cases of earlier date. Appellate cases cannot, of course, give an accurate picture of the situation as it exists in the trial courts, the real arena for the judicial discretion discussed here. Unfortunately, however, the records of the trial courts are almost inaccessible for study, and this necessitates the present approach. But information as to the workings of the trial court in this field is not wholly lacking. The Institute of Law of Johns Hopkins University has made intensive studies of the divorce court in action in Ohio and Maryland.' The Ohio study covered the period from July i, I930 to December 31, I930; the Maryland study covers all cases filed during I929 with disposition as of May I, I931. These studies do not indicate the factors operative in the exercise of judicial discretion with respect to alimony, but they do reveal the results of the process in the large. The study conducted in Ohio2 discloses that wives sought divorces and other "incidental relief"3 in 4195 actions for divorce and were accorded such relief in 4438 cases; while the husbands sought "incidental relief" in only 649 actions, they

The Exercise of Judicial Discretion in the Award of Alimony