## Facts

- Lydia McGuire and Charles W. McGuire married in 1919 and continuously lived together on Charles’s farm in Wayne County, Nebraska.
- Charles was known for extreme frugality, which Lydia knew when she married him.
- Lydia owned 80 acres from a prior marriage and used income from rent and small farm sales to buy groceries and clothing and to travel to see her daughters.
- The marital home remained modest and lacked certain conveniences despite evidence that Charles had substantial assets and annual income.
- As Lydia’s health limited her ability to generate her own supplemental income, she sought improvements and expenditures Charles refused to make.
- Lydia did not seek divorce or legal separation; she sued while continuing to live with Charles, requesting maintenance, support, costs, and attorney’s fees.

## Issues

1. Whether a पत्नी who is living with her husband and not separated may maintain an equity action against him for maintenance and support.
2. Whether attorney’s fees may be awarded in such an action without statutory authorization or an established uniform practice permitting such fees.

## Decision

- The Nebraska Supreme Court reversed the district court’s decree and remanded with directions to dismiss the action.
- The court held that, where spouses are cohabiting and not separated, a spouse may not maintain an equity suit against the other for maintenance.
- The court held the attorney’s fee award was improper because fees are allowed only when authorized by statute or recognized by an established uniform course of procedure, and no valid underlying cause of action existed here.

## Legal Principles

- Courts will not grant separate maintenance in equity when the marital relationship is ongoing and the parties live together without separation.
- Public policy disfavors judicial supervision of an intact household’s internal “living standards” or compelled spending levels when the home is being maintained and the couple remains cohabiting.
- Attorney’s fees are recoverable only when authorized by statute or supported by a uniform and established procedural practice; when the action lacks a legal basis, an award of fees is unauthorized.

## Conclusion

Because the parties continued to live together and were not separated, the court concluded equity would not intervene to order maintenance or to regulate household expenditures, and it therefore reversed the support decree and vacated the attorney’s fee award, directing dismissal of the case.


McGuire v. McGuire, 157 Neb. 226, 59 N.W.2d 336 (Neb. 1953)