Bowman v. Bowman
| Decision Date | 16 May 1887 |
| Parties | BOWMAN v. BOWMAN. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois |
Hogan Case & Hogan, for complainant.
Frank J. Bowman, pro se, and L. M. Shreve, for defendant.
This is a bill for divorce, originally filed by the complainant in the circuit court of Cook County, and by the defendant removed to this court. A motion is now made to remand on the ground that it is not a removable cases. The application to remand was made in the state court before an answer was filed by the defendant; but in his petition for removal the defendant alleges that the complainant, Ida M. Bowman, was never married to the defendant, and is not his wife, but is a feme sole, and wholly denies the allegation of marriage set out in the bill; and alleges further that the defendant is a citizen of the state of Missouri, and the complainant is a citizen of the state of Illinois, and has been for many years past, and that she was never a citizen of the state of Missouri. The right of removal is claimed upon the ground that the controversy in the case is between a citizen of Missouri and a citizen of Illinois, and that it involves more than the sum of $2,000; the defendant insisting that he has the right as a citizen of Missouri to have the issue he makes in the case, that he was never married to the complainant tried in this court.
It is a rule so well fixed as not to require the citation of authorities in its support that the citizenship of the wife follows the citizenship of the husband; and hence, for this reason, perhaps more than any other, this class of litigation has never obtained admission in the federal courts. In Barber v. Barber, 21 Ho. 582, it is said:
'We disclaim altogether any jurisdiction in the courts of the United States upon the subject of divorce, or for the allowance of alimony, either as an original proceeding in chancery, or as an incident to a divorce a vinculo, or to one from bed and board.' There was a dissenting opinion filed in this case, concurred in by Chief Justice TANEY and Justices DANIEL and CAMPBELL, and the main ground of their dissent was that there could be no jurisdiction in the federal courts to try this class of cases, because the citizenship of the husband and wife were one. So that we have in that case the unanimous opinion of the court that this class of cases cannot be entertained here.
As before stated, it is contended as the sole ground of the right to remove this case that the defendant being, as he alleges, untruthfully charged with being the husband of the complainant, and being a citizen of the state of Missouri while, as he alleges, she is a citizen of the state of Illinois, he is entitled to have that issue tried by the federal court; and that...
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