Brown v. Brown

• Decision Date: 28 March 1955
• Docket Number: No. 33063,33063
• Citation: 46 Wn.2d 370,281 P.2d 850
• Parties: Charles S. BROWN, Appellant, v. Muriel H. BROWN, Respondent.
• Court: Washington Supreme Court

Page 370

46 Wn.2d 370

281 P.2d 850

Charles S. BROWN, Appellant, v. Muriel H. BROWN, Respondent.

No. 33063.

Supreme Court of Washington, Department 2.

March 28, 1955.

Rehearing Denied May 16, 1955.

Joseph L. McDole, Samuel W. Fancher, Spokane, for appellant.

Clarke & Eklow, Spokane, for respondent.

MALLERY, Justice.

The defendant wife owned a house and two lots in Spokane before her marriage to plaintiff on December 11, 1949. Thereafter, he coerced her into deeding him an undivided one-half interest in the property. On September 19, 1952, he procured an interlocutory decree of divorce by default, in a California action in which she did not appear. It approved a property settlement between the parties, which included the deed to the property in question.

The final decree of divorce was entered October 7, 1953, and the plaintiff husband brought this action, as a tenant in common, for the partition of the Spokane real estate, on November 25, 1953. The defendant wife cross-complained seeking cancellation of the deed for fraud, duress, and coercion.

The plaintiff's demurrer to the cross-complaint was overruled. The court dismissed plaintiff's action for partition and granted defendant's prayer on her cross-complaint.

The plaintiff appeals.

He does not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the judgment, but, instead, contends that the demurrer should have been sustained, and that no evidence should have been admitted in support of the cross-complaint.

He relies upon the rule of In re Garrity's Estate, 22 Wash.2d 391, 156 P.2d 217, that where a property settlement is approved by a divorce decree, the rights of the parties rest upon the deree rather than the property settlement. From this, he argues that the validity of the deed is res judicata, and that respondent's cross-complaint to cancel it is a collateral attack upon the California decree.

Assuming, without deciding, that this is so, it is still not decisive of the case. A decree can be collaterally attacked upon the ground that it is void for want of jurisdiction. In Maple v. Maple, 29 Wash.2d 858, 189 P.2d 976, 980, we said:

'In two recent decisions of this court, it has been laid down as the law that the provisions of the Federal constitution requiring that full faith and credit be given in each state to the judicial proceedings of every other state do not prevent a collateral attack upon the jurisdiction of a sister state to render a judgment which is later offered in evidence in an action brought in another state, and that the record of a judgment rendered in the sister state may, in such collateral attack, he contradicted as to the facts necessary to give the court of that state jurisdiction. Mapes v. Mapes, 24 Wash.2d 743, 167 P.2d 405; Wampler v. Wampler, 25 Wash.2d 258, 170 P.2d 316.'

The California court had no jurisdiction over the Spokane real estate. It is a fundamental maxim of international jurisprudence that every state or nation possesses an exclusive sovereignty and jurisdiction within its own territory. The rule is well established that in divorce proceedings the courts of one state cannot directly affect the legal title to land situated in another state. See Taylor v. Taylor, 192 Cal. 71, 218 P. 756, 51 A.L.R. 1081. As was said in Schluter v. Schluter, 130...