Bartsch v. Bartsch

• Decision Date: 15 November 2001
• Docket Number: No. 00-0068.,00-0068.
• Citation: 636 N.W.2d 3
• Parties: Tara E. BARTSCH, Appellee, v. Nathan R. BARTSCH, Appellant.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

636 N.W.2d 3

Tara E. BARTSCH, Appellee, v. Nathan R. BARTSCH, Appellant.

No. 00-0068.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

November 15, 2001.

Janette S. Voss of Remley, Willems, McQuillen & Voss, Anamosa, for appellant.

Anne E.H. Hoskins of Fishel and Hoskins, Marion, for appellee.

LARSON, Justice.

Nathan Bartsch, a nonresident of Iowa, appeared specially in an Iowa domestic-abuse case under Iowa Code chapter 236 (1999) to challenge the court's personal jurisdiction over him. The court agreed it did not have personal jurisdiction but concluded that, for purposes of entering a protective order under chapter 236, personal jurisdiction was not required. The court also denied Nathan's motion to dismiss based on forum non conveniens. We agree and therefore affirm.

I. Facts and Prior Proceedings.

Tara Bartsch filed an application for a protective order against Nathan Bartsch in Jones County District Court in November 1999. Tara was a resident of Iowa, and Nathan was apparently a resident of Colorado. (He has asserted residency in both Utah and Colorado.) They were married but separated. Their daughter, Morgan, was less than a year old when Tara moved to Iowa to live with her parents in October 1999. While both Nathan and Tara had early ties to Iowa, they moved to Utah in 1994 and lived there until December 1997, when they moved to Texas. Approximately a year later, they moved back to Utah and continued to live there until October 1999, when Tara moved to Iowa. She lived in Iowa at the time she filed her application for a protective order on November 12, 1999. The court entered a temporary protective order on that date. See Iowa Code § 236.4. By that time, Nathan says he had moved to Colorado, where he was served with notice of Tara's application for a protective order. He immediately challenged the order by a motion to dismiss. The court denied his motion.

II. Standard of Review.

Our scope of review on a motion to dismiss is well established.

"The trial court's findings of fact have the effect of a jury verdict and are subject to challenge only if not supported by substantial evidence in the record; we are not bound, however, by the trial court's application of legal principles or its conclusions of law."

Percival v. Bankers Trust Co., 450 N.W.2d 860, 861 (Iowa 1990) (quoting State ex rel. Miller v. Internal Energy Mgmt. Corp., 324 N.W.2d 707, 709-10 (Iowa 1982)).

III. Personal Jurisdiction.

The district court found that the defendant did not have sufficient minimum contacts for personal jurisdiction, but personal jurisdiction was not required. The defendant challenges the district court's exercise of jurisdiction as "contrary to Iowa case law regarding the necessity of a finding of both subject matter jurisdiction and personal jurisdiction in order to exercise jurisdiction over the case." The plaintiff seems to concede the need for personal jurisdiction but contends it is "inconceivable" that defendant lacks sufficient minimum contacts.

We believe the district court's finding of insufficient contacts for personal jurisdiction is supported by substantial evidence, and we reject Tara's argument to the contrary. While both parties were born in Iowa, lived here most of their lives, and were married here, they moved to Utah in 1994 immediately after their marriage, and Nathan currently lives in Colorado. Despite the fact Nathan maintained substantial ties to Iowa prior to 1994, he has had virtually no ties to Iowa since that time, except that his wife and child now live here.

Nevertheless, we affirm the legal conclusion by the district court that, under these circumstances, personal jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant is not required for a court to enter an order preserving the protected status afforded Iowa residents under chapter 236. See State v. Vincik, 436 N.W.2d 350, 354 (Iowa 1989) (court's ruling "will be upheld if sustainable on any grounds appearing in the record"). The district court's ruling does not purport to grant affirmative relief against the defendant; it merely preserves the protected status accorded to the plaintiff by chapter 236.

In other situations it is clear personal jurisdiction is not necessary to satisfy the demands of the Due Process Clause. For example,

[t]he Supreme Court has held that personal jurisdiction over a nonresident spouse is not necessary to dissolve a marriage because it is a status determination. Traditionally, child custody determinations have also been exempt from the personal jurisdiction requirement. The original drafters of the [Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act] stated that custody determinations were status exceptions and exempt from the personal jurisdiction requirement.

Anthony A. Dorland, Case Note, Hughs ex rel. Praul v. Cole, 572 N.W.2d 747 (Minn.Ct.App.1997), 25 Wm. Mitchell L.Rev. 965, 988-89 (1999) (citations omitted). As early as Pennoyer v. Neff, the Supreme Court recognized that not all exercises of a state's subject matter jurisdiction require personal jurisdiction of a defendant. The Court stated:

The jurisdiction which every State possesses, to determine the civil status and capacities of all its inhabitants involves authority to prescribe the conditions on which proceedings affecting them may be commenced and carried on within its territory. The State, for example, has absolute right to prescribe the conditions upon which the marriage relation between its own citizens shall be created, and the causes for which it may be dissolved. One of the parties guilty of acts for which, by the law of the State, a dissolution may be granted, may have removed to a State where no dissolution is permitted. The complaining party would, therefore, fail if a divorce were sought in the state of the defendant; and if application could not be made to the tribunals of the complainant's domicile in such case, ... the injured citizen would be without redress.

Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S. 714, 734-35, 24 L.Ed. 565, 573 (1877). (emphasis added).

This concept is reflected in the Restatement of Conflict of Laws, which recognizes that an adjudication of status does not require personal jurisdiction. The Restatement illustrates the point:

A leaves his home in State X and goes to State Y, where he becomes domiciled and there obtains an ex parte divorce from B, his wife. Assuming that the requirements of proper notice and of opportunity to be heard have been met, this divorce is valid and must be recognized in X under full faith and credit even though B was not personally subject to the jurisdiction of the Y court and at all times retained her domicile in X.

Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws § 71 cmt. a, illus. 1, at 219 (1971). Thus, marriage-dissolution actions, insofar as they affect the status of marriages, do not require personal jurisdiction of the defendant.

Domicile creates a relationship to the state which is adequate for numerous exercises of state power. Each state as a sovereign has a rightful and legitimate concern in the marital status of persons domiciled within its borders. The marriage relation creates problems of large social importance. Protection of offspring, property interests, and the enforcement of marital responsibilities are but a few of commanding problems in the field of domestic relations with which the state must deal. Thus it is plain that each state by virtue of its command over its domiciliaries and its large interest in the institutions of marriage can alter within its own borders the marriage status of the spouse domiciled there, even though the other spouse is absent. There is no constitutional barrier if the form and nature of the substituted service meet the requirements of due process.

Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U.S. 287, 298-99, 63 S.Ct. 207, 213, 87 L.Ed. 279, 286 (1942) (emphasis added) (citations omitted). Iowa Code chapter 236 clearly creates a status of "protection" under the reasoning of Williams. In fact, we have said "chapter 236 is protective rather than punitive." Christenson v. Christenson, 472 N.W.2d 279, 280 (Iowa 1991).

The recognition in Williams that the "protection of offspring" is a state concern overriding the need for personal jurisdiction underlies the general rule that a state may make custody adjudications without personal jurisdiction of the defendant. See Unif. Child Custody Jurisdiction Act § 12 cmt. (1999) ("There is no requirement for technical personal jurisdiction, on the traditional theory that custody determinations, as distinguished from support actions, are proceedings in rem or proceedings affecting status." (citation omitted)); In re Marriage of Torres, 62 Cal.App.4th 1367, 73 Cal.Rptr.2d 344, 352 (1998); In re Paternity of Robinaugh, 616 N.E.2d 409, 411 (Ind.Ct.App.1993) ("Custody proceedings are adjudications of status, and as such are an exception to the minimum contacts requirements normally associated with discussions of personal jurisdiction."); Hudson v. Hudson, 35 Wash.App. 822, 670 P.2d 287, 293 (1983); see also Iowa Code § 598B.201(3) (Supp.1999) ("Physical presence of, or personal jurisdiction over, a party or a child is not necessary or sufficient to make a child-custody determination.").

The court in Perry v. Ponder, 604 S.W.2d 306 (Tex.Civ.App.1980), explains the rationale of our ruling today:

[A] family relationship may be among those matters concerning which the forum state may have such an interest that its courts may reasonably make an adjudication affecting that relationship, even though one of the parties to the relationship may have had no personal contacts with the forum state.

The reasonableness of such an adjudication is well recognized in divorce cases, in which the status of marriage may be adjudicated at the domicile of one party without establishing any contacts by the nonresident spouse with the state of the forum. See Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U.S. 287, 63 S.Ct. 207, 87 L.Ed. 279 (1942). Custody of children is a status or relationship in

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