This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
One man has sued his wife's lover for $1.5 million in damages, claiming the extramarital affair ruined his life and caused his wife to run off with her lover to Idaho.
The plaintiff, who lives in Salt Lake County, married his wife in 1995, and they have two teenage children together, according to a civil lawsuit filed Thursday in 3rd District Court.
The lawsuit alleges the wife started an affair in 2010, culminating with her decision in September 2011 to move to Burley, Idaho, so she could live with her lover. The lawsuit claims the woman left her children behind as well.
The husband alleged the lover knew all along that he was having an affair with a married woman who had two children, but continued the affair anyway. The affair, the husband alleged, cost him the "lawful, natural and conjugal rights and privileges" that he was entitled to in the marriage, as well as robbing their children of "the love, companionship, services and income that form the foundation of family life with two parents."
The lover, the lawsuit claims, purposely ruined the couple's marriage.
The husband is suing his wife's lover for $1 million in punitive damages, $250,000 for intentionally inflicting emotional distress and $250,000 for causing alienation of affections.
Similar lawsuits have been filed in Utah. In 2000, a Salt Lake County jury ordered a woman to pay $500,000 after it found she stole another woman's husband. In 1999, a woman sued the state and a female wildlife officer after the officer and the plaintiff's husband fell in love during a poaching sting, causing the breakup of a 23-year marriage. The case against the state was later dismissed. The last news reports on the matter indicated the wife and the lover were settling out of court. In 2000, a wife sued after she alleged her husband ran off and later married their therapist. That case was dismissed in 2005, court records show.
One Utah attorney who by 2000 had handled four such cases reported three of those were settled out of court and another ended with a reconciliation.
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