Gregory v. Gregory

• Decision Date: 27 March 1886
• Citation: 3 A. 280
• Parties: GREGORY v. GREGORY.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

3 A. 280

GREGORY

v. GREGORY.¹

SUPREME COURT OF MAINE.

Filed March 27, 1886.

On exceptions by defendant.

Barker, Vose & Barker, for plaintiff.

Crosby & Crosby, for defendant.

EMERY, J. Marriage is a civil status. The rights and obligations of the parties are not merely contractual, but are fixed, changed, or dissolved by law. In case of a conflict of laws, the lex domicilii controls the status of the person, though his contractual or property rights may be subject to other laws. The state has the absolute right to determine or alter the civil status of all its inhabitants, no matter where they may temporarily be, and no matter where the contracts, or acts giving rise to such status, may have been made or clone. Other states or countries will, in this matter, accept without question the decrees of the courts of the home state. Harding v. Alden, 9 Me. 140; Gregory v. Gregory, 76 Me. 535, and cases cited. But the state has this power only over its own inhabitants. The mere presence within its territory of the inhabitants of other states gives it no authority to fix or change their status. The state of their residence still retains its control over that. It alone can free its citizens from marital obligations. Any proceedings of another state to that end will be ineffectual, and will be disregarded elsewhere. Gregory v. Gregory, supra; Sewall v. Sewall, 122 Mass. 156; Gettys v. Gettys, 31 Amer. Rep. 637; Rev. St. c. 60, § 10.

In this case, the marriage was in this state, and both parties to it were for a time inhabitants of this state. The defendants allege that their ancester, the husband, was effectually divorced in Illinois. They produce a copy of a decree for such a divorce upon the libel of the husband, made in the proper court of Illinois, which decree, we may admit, for the purposes of this case, is regular and effectual, if the husband was at the time an inhabitant of the state of Illinois. Was he then an inhabitant of that state? The Illinois court found and declared that he was. The defendants say that finding is conclusive; that it cannot be questioned by our courts. They rely upon the United States constitution, art. 4, § 1, requiring full faith and credit to be given in each state to the judicial proceedings of every other state. It has been well settled by judicial construction that the constitutional provision above quoted only applies when it appears that the court whose judgment is involved had jurisdiction in fact. The clause quoted, does not make a court's own declaration of its jurisdiction binding on the courts of other states. One court cannot, by a simple ipse dixit, compel other courts to yield jurisdiction. It has been repeatedly held, therefore, that a court's jurisdiction can always be inquired into, even against the express recitals and findings of the court. Thompson v. Whitman, 18 Wall. 457; Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U. S. 714; Sewall v. Sewall, 122 Mass. 156; Kerr v. Kerr, 41 N. Y. 272; Hoffman v. Hoffman, 46 N. Y. 30.

In the case at bar, the residence of the husband at the time was the one fact which would uphold or defeat the jurisdiction of the Illinois court. The judge declined to be bound by the recitals of the Illinois court, and submitted the question of residence to the jury, instructing them that, if the husband was not an inhabitant of Illinois at the time, the Illinois decree of divorce was invalid. The judge did rightly, and the instruction was correct. If the Illinois court had no jurisdiction over the status of the husband, Gregory, by reason of his non-residence in that state, he being an inhabitant of this state, that court could not effectually make any decree of divorce for any cause. Its decree, for whatever cause, would be void for want of jurisdiction over the person of the libelant. The requested instruction was therefore properly refused. Exceptions overruled.

PETERS, C. J., DANFORTH, VIRGIN, FOSTER, and HASKELL, JJ., concurred.

NOTE.

A divorce, regularly procured in another state, in accordance with the laws and methods of procedure in such state, personal service having been had on the defendant, is valid. Van Orsdal v. Van Orsdal, (Iowa,) 24 N. W. Rep. 579.

In O'Dea v. O'Dea, (N. Y.) 4 N. E. Rep. 110, a divorce procured by the husband in Ohio from the wife, residing in Canada, the service on her being by sending summons and copy of petition through the mail, but to which the wife paid no attention whatever, was held to be invalid, and not to release the wife from the marriage contract.

A foreign divorce, if procured by fraud, is not binding. Reed v. Reed, (Mich.) 17 N. W. Rep. 720.

A foreign divorce cannot be impeached in a purely collateral civil action by seeking to show that the residence of the complainant in the divorce suit was not such as to give the foreign court jurisdiction. Waldo v. Waldo, (Mich.) 17 N. W. Rep. 710.

Where a foreign divorce is set up, and in reply such divorce is claimed to be void for want of jurisdiction, and because obtained by fraud, the existence of such divorce is not thereby admitted, but must be proved by the defendant, Platner v. Platner, (Iowa,) 23 N. W. Rep. 764.

A judgment of divorce rendered in another state, if recognized as valid, must be held to destroy the marriage relation as to both parties in all places; but when a divorce has been granted, without notice, in a foreign jurisdiction, the wife at the time living in the state where married, and there being property there, owned by the husband at the time of the divorce, in which the wile has inchoate interests which have not been secured to her by the judgment of divorce, and no other provision having been made for her just alimony, a court of equity may, upon the ground of such foreign divorce, entertain an action for alimony out of such property. Cook v. Cook, (Wis.) 14 N. W. Rep. 443.

In Hoffman v. Hoffman, 46 N. Y. 30, it is said: "Where a person, a resident of this state, went into another state for the purpose of...