Magazine content is available exclusively for TIME subscribers.AN ANTIQUE LAW SENDS TREMORS THROUGH MANY A HEART
Last week, when a North Carolina woman successfully sued her husband's lover for wrecking their marriage, it gave the current national recalculation of the costs of divorce a new bottom line. Lawyers have a word for it. They call these "heart-balm" cases, the heart being the injured party, the balm in this case a cool, soothing $1 million.
The melodrama was set in Burlington, N.C., a small town about 20 miles from Greensboro, where Dorothy Hutelmyer was twice president of the PTA, her husband Joseph coached baseball and ran Seaboard Underwriters, and Lynne Cox worked as his secretary. The Hutelmyers' was...
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