Shoudy

This is an appeal from a judgment in the defendant’s favor. As to the facts of the case there is no material dispute: The plaintiff and appellant Emma Eldred Shoudy intermarried with one Dexter Shoudy on March 1, 1906. There was issue of this marriage one child, Kenneth Shoudy, born October 10, 1907. The parties to said marriage were divorced on April 10, 1916. On February 6, 1919, Dexter Shoudy married Julia Cochran, the defendant and respondent herein. On the twenty-second day of September, 1908, Dexter Shoudy had caused two life insurance policies, each for $2,000, to be issued by the Illinois Bankers Life' Association upon his life, with his then wife, Emma Shoudy, as the beneficiary named therein. On the twenty-ninth day of March, 1916, while a divorce action instituted by his said wife against Dexter Shoudy was pending and about to be brought to trial, the latter wrote a letter to his sister, Mrs. Laura Armstrong—who, it seems, had interested herself in bringing about a property settlement between the parties—which letter, as far as is material, reads as follows:

Upon the same day on which this letter was written Dexter Shoudy and his then wife, the plaintiff herein,…