DuShane v. DuShane

• Decision Date: 30 December 1985
• Docket Number: No. 4-384,4-384
• Citation: 486 N.E.2d 1106
• Parties: Gloria DuSHANE, Appellant (Petitioner Below), v. John E. DuSHANE, Appellee (Respondent Below). A 80.
• Court: Indiana Appellate Court

Page 1106

486 N.E.2d 1106

Gloria DuSHANE, Appellant (Petitioner Below), v. John E. DuSHANE, Appellee (Respondent Below).

No. 4-384 A 80.

Court of Appeals of Indiana Fourth District.

Dec. 30, 1985.

William M. Pope, Indianapolis, for appellant.

Winston T. Hay, Wunder & Hay, Indianapolis, for appellee.

YOUNG, Presiding Judge.

Gloria DuShane appeals the trial court's refusal to grant her relief from the decree dissolving her marriage to John E. DuShane.

We affirm.

On March 12, 1979, the Marion Superior Court dissolved the parties' marriage. The decree of dissolution followed almost verbatim the parties' written agreement. No appeal was taken. Four years later, after remarriage, DuShane filed a Trial Rule 60(B) motion seeking to invalidate the decree. The trial court denied her petition.

Trial Rule 60(B)(6) authorizes a court to grant relief from a void judgment "upon such terms as are just." On appeal, we will set aside a trial court's ruling in this regard only if it constitutes an abuse of discretion. In Re Marriage of Bates (1985), Ind.App., 474 N.E.2d 140; In Re Marriage of Jones (1979), 180 Ind.App. 496, 389 N.E.2d 338.

In her petition for relief, appellant essentially alleged that at the time of her marriage to John DuShane, he already had a spouse. She concluded that their marriage was void ab initio and the trial court lacked subject matter jurisdiction to dissolve the marriage.

The question of subject matter jurisdiction entails a determination of whether a court has jurisdiction over the general class of actions to which a particular case belongs. Twyman v. State (1984), Ind., 459 N.E.2d 705. Appellant is correct in her assertion that subject matter jurisdiction may not be conferred by consent, agreement or waiver. Id. In this case, the parties, residents of Indiana at the time of the original action, brought their marital status before the court. The trial court clearly had jurisdiction to assess this status. Presuming that the parties were validly married, the trial court issued a decree of dissolution from which the parties are now estopped from obtaining relief. See Chermak v. Chermak (1949), 227 Ind. 625, 88 N.E.2d 250, Walker v. Walker (1898), 150 Ind. 317, 50 N.E. 68.

Appellant relies heavily on Williams v. Williams (1984), Ind.App., 460 N.E.2d 1226, and Van Winkle v. Van Winkle (1954), 124 Ind.App. 626, 118 N.E.2d 389, in support of her argument that the trial court lacked subject matter jurisdiction. These cases essentially stand for the proposition that a court has no jurisdiction to dissolve a marriage which does not exist. In each of these cases, however, the parties raised the issue of the validity of the marriage in a direct appeal shortly after the trial court's original decision on this question. In this case, however, no appeal was taken from the trial court's determination that the marriage was valid and should be dissolved.

In Schoffstall v. Failey (1979), 180 Ind.App. 528, 389 N.E.2d 361, the first district of this court reasoned that considerations of subject matter jurisdiction must be tempered by the goal of finality. "A court's determination that it has jurisdiction of the subject matter is res judicata on that issue ... if a party had an opportunity to contest subject matter jurisdiction and failed to do so." Id. at 531, 389 N.E.2d at 363, quoting C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure, 1973 Civil Sec. 2862. The court in Schoffstall further reasoned:

In the interest of finality, the concept of void judgment is narrowly construed. While absence of subject matter jurisdiction may make a judgment void, such total want of jurisdiction must be distinguished from an error in the exercise of jurisdiction. A court has the power to determine its own jurisdiction and an error in that jurisdiction will not render the judgment void. Only in the rare instance of a clear usurpation of power will a judgment be rendered void.

Id. In this case, we do not find the clear usurpation of power which would render the trial court's judgment void.

The concept of finality espoused in Schoffstall is apparent in several cases dealing specifically with challenges to dissolution decrees. In Lyon v. Lyon (1977), 174 Ind.App. 597, 369 N.E.2d 649, the third district of this court refused to address the merits of appellant's argument that the alimony order in a twelve year old decree was void. The court noted:

It has long been the law of this state that one who procures a court to act wrongly, even where the action is beyond the court's jurisdiction, is estopped to then claim the lack of jurisdiction as a defense to the result obtained. Robertson v. Smith (1891), 129 Ind. 422, 28 N.E. 857.

Id. at 598, 369 N.E.2d at 650.

Similarly, in Novak v. Novak (1956), 126 Ind.App. 428, 133 N.E.2d 578, our supreme court observed that the appellant had an opportunity to question the validity of her divorce decree in the original suit. The court noted that because she had accepted the benefits of the decree and remarried, she would be estopped, in an action to quiet title, to argue that the...