North Carolina resident Brenay Kennard will have to pay $1.75 million after a jury found her liable on Monday for destroying a Durham couple’s marriage.

  The jury found Kennard liable for criminal conversation and alienation of affection.

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North Carolina's alienation of affection law allows a spouse to sue the person they blame for an affair that ends a marriage. North Carolina is one of the few states that allows jilted spouses to sue someone for interfering in their marriage.

Origins of alienation of affection laws

In 105 B.C., codes followed by the Teutonic tribes allowed for a husband to kill a man for sleeping with his wife.

In 1745, Winsmore vs. Greenbank in the English Court of Common Pleas. The husband claimed a man "maliciously and wickedly ... persuaded, procured and enticed his wife.” The husband won. At the time, a wife was considered property and losing that property entitled a husband to compensation.

It wasn't until 1866 that one of these cases popped up in the United States. The wife cheated, the husband sued -- and he won.

Over the next 50 years, courts and lawmakers ruled wives were not property.

They had equal rights to their husbands and if their husbands cheated, they could sue, too.

In the 1930s, lawmakers got worried about black mail and extortion, saying alienation of affection didn't work anymore. In 1935, Indiana was the first state to ban it.

Since then, 42 states have banned suing a spouse over infidelity. Even England, the place where alienation of affection started, banned it in 1970.

However, North Carolina is one of six states that still have an alienation of affection law: Hawaii, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Dakota and Utah are the others.

Alienation of affection cases in North Carolina

  • In 1999, a wife sued her husband for sleeping with his secretary. The wife won, getting $500,000. After the trial, the husband married the secretary. The story was turned into a "Lifetime" movie called "The Price of a Broken Heart.”
    • In 2011, Carol Puryear was awarded a $30 million judgement against Betty Devin. Carol Puryear was the former wife of Donald Puryear, who owns a trucking company in Raleigh. The settlement is the largest of its kind in North Carolina history, according to court records.
      • In 2017, a case nearly spelled the end of alienation of affection in North Carolina. However, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled only the legislature could end the practice for good. State lawmakers have tried multiple times to pass bills ending the law, but have failed. It includes a bill in a committee right now.
        • In 2018, NFL star Fletcher Cox was sued by a North Carolina man named Joshua Jeffords, who claimed the football player had an affair with his wife. The lawsuit ended in an undisclosed settlement.
          • In 2021, former state Sen. Rick Gunn settled a lawsuit filed by Arthur Johns for $3 million. Gunn was accused of having a long-running affair with Johns' wife, who was Gunn's legislative assistant.