CONNIVANCE. An agreement or consent, indirectly given, that something unlawful shall be done by another.
Connivance differs from condonation, though the same legal consequences may attend It. Conniv ance necessarily involves criminality on the part of the individual who connives; condonation may take place without imputing the slightest blame to the party who forgives the Injury. Connivance must be the act of the mind before the offence has been committed; condonation ie the result of a deter mination to forgive an injury which was not known until after It was inflicted. 3 Hagg. Eccl. 350. Connivance differs, also, from collusion: the for mer is generally collusion for a particular pur pose, while the latter may exist without conniv ance. 3 Hagg. Eccl. 130.
The connivance of the husband to his wife's prostitution deprives him of the right of obtaining a divorce, or of recovering dam ages from the seducer ; Geary, Mar, & Fam. R. 268; 4 Term 657. The husband may ac tively connive at the adultery; Myers v. My ers, 41 Barb. (N. Y.) 114; Redden v. Red den, 21 N. J. Eq. 61; or he may passively; 5 Eng. Ecc. 27; 3 Hagg. Eccl. 87. It may he satisfactorily proved by implication. See Shelf. Mar. & Div. 449; 2 Dish. Mar. & Div.
§ 6; 2 Hagg. Ecel. 278, 376; 3 id. 58, 82, 107, 119, 312; Pierce v. Pierce, 3 Pick. (Mass.) 299, 15 Am. Dec. 210; Seagar v. Sligerland, 2 Caines (N. Y.) 219; Masten v. Masten, 15 N. H. 161; Herrick v. Herrick, 31 Mich. 300; In re Childs,, 109 Mass. 407 ; Cochran v. Coch ran, 35 Ia. 477.
A husband who connives at or consents to adultery by his wife is, deemed as consenting to it with others aud cannot have a divorce for a subsequent act with a different person, though the act connived at was not commit ted; Redden v. Redden, 21 N. J. Eq. 61; nor can he where the wife was led into it by connivance of a detective employed by the husband, not for such purpose but to obtain evidence; Rademacher v. Rademacher, 74 N. J. Eq. 570, 70 Atl. 687; L. R. 2 P. & D. 428. So also abandonment by the wife, knowing (as she said she did) that the husband would naturally seek other women, was held to be connivance; Richardson v. Richardson, 114 N. Y. Supp. 912. Where a husbandwil fully abstains from any attempt to prevent misconduct which he must know is likely to occur, he is held to have connived at such misconduct; 33 L. J. Mat. Cas. 161.