Coffey v. Coffey

• Decision Date: 17 July 1940
• Docket Number: No. 213.,213.
• Citation: 14 A.2d 485
• Parties: COFFEY v. COFFEY et al.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

14 A.2d 485

COFFEY

v. COFFEY et al.

No. 213.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

July 17, 1940.

Certiorari by Edward L. Coffey against Edith W. Coffey, the Juvenile Court of the County of Atlantic, N. J., now the Atlantic County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, and Palmer M. Way, Judge of the Atlantic County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, to review a judgment of the Atlantic County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court in a proceeding brought by prosecutor to set aside a prior judgment of the Juvenile Court of the County of Atlantic, adjudging prosecutor to be a disorderly person and ordering that prosecutor make weekly payments for support of family.

Judgment of the Atlantic County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court vacated, but without costs.

Argued May term, 1940, before CASE, DONGES, and HEHER, JJ.

Benjamin A. Rimm, of Atlantic City, for prosecutor.

Clarence Blitz, of Atlantic City, for Edith W. Coffey.

HEHER, Justice.

On September 19, 1925, prosecutor was adjudged "to be a disorderly person" in the Juvenile Court of the County of Atlantic on a sworn complaint made by his wife, then a resident of the City of Philadelphia, in the State of Pennsylvania, charging that he had "abandoned, deserted and wilfully refused or neglected to provide for" her, and ordered to pay the sum of $15 per week to "the Chief Probation Officer of the County of Atlantic for the support and maintenance of his said family." By an order entered on February 26, 1927, the weekly payment thus prescribed was reduced to $7.50; and, by a like order made on September 1, 1933, there was a further reduction to $3.50.

On February 21, 1939, prosecutor presented a petition to the Atlantic County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, averring the non-residence of his wife at the time of the making of the complaint, and likewise when the subsequent orders adverted to were entered, and that she had never "maintained a residence" in this state and "would not become a public charge" therein, and praying that the judgment be vacated for want of jurisdiction of the subject matter. A rule directing the defendants herein to show cause why the prayer of the petition should not be granted was discharged on the ground that the judgment, as so modified, "cannot now be collaterally attacked;" and this judicial action is now assailed on certiorari.

The argument is that under the revision of the Disorderly Persons Act adopted in 1898, as amended by Chapter 86 of the Laws of 1911 (Pamph. L. 1898, p. 947; Comp. Stat. 1910, p. 1931; Pamph. L. 1911, p. 117, N.J.S.A. 2:204-1, 2:204-2) jurisdiction could be conferred only by a complaint made by the municipal overseer of the poor, and that "it was also necessary to show" that the complaining wife "would become a public charge on the City of Atlantic City."

The instant proceeding is a direct rather than a collateral attack upon the judgment. Hinners v. Banville, 114 N.J. Eq. 348, 168 A. 618. Moreover, if there was a lack of jurisdiction of the subject matter, the judgment is void, and is therefore subject to collateral attack. Maguire v. Van Meter, 121 N.J.L. 150, 1 A. 2d 445; McMahon v. Amoroso, 108 N.J.Eq. 263, 154 A. 840.

Chapter 360 of the Laws of 1912, as amended by Chapter 83 of the Laws of 1918 (Pamph.L.1912, p. 630; Pamph.L. 1918, p. 214), invested the several county juvenile courts with concurrent jurisdiction of "disputes involving the domestic relation, or the welfare of children, the jurisdiction over which is now or may hereafter be by law vested in any court of this State except the Court of Chancery and the Orphans' Court," and defined that jurisdictional grant as embracing "complaints for violation" of the Disorderly Persons Act (Revision of 1898, N.J.S.A. 2:201-1 et seq.), the act for the settlement and relief of the poor (Revision of 1911, P. L. p. 390), the act of 1915 concerning the welfare of children, "and the acts amendatory thereof and supplements thereto, N.J. S.A. 9:6-1 et seq. where the gravamen of the complaint is the failure or neglect, of one member of a family to satisfy or discharge his legal obligations to another member or members of the...