Hekking v. Pfaff

• Decision Date: 24 August 1897
• Docket Number: 584
• Citation: Hekking v. Pfaff, 82 F. 403 (D. Mass. 1897)
• Parties: HEKKING v. PFAFF.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts

82 F. 403

HEKKING v. PFAFF.

No. 584

United States Circuit Court, D. Massachusetts.

August 24, 1897

D. F Kimball, for plaintiff.

Jabez Fox and Gerard Bement, for defendant.

PUTNAM Circuit Judge.

April 20, 1893, the plaintiff, who was then a resident of the state of South Dakota, obtained a decree for a divorce against the defendant in the circuit court of that state for the county of Lincoln. In the original complaint she prayed for alimony but no alimony was granted in connection with the decree of divorce. The entire decree was as follows:

'It is ordered and adjudged that the bonds of matrimony heretofore and until now existing between the said plaintiff and the said defendant be, and the same are dissolved, and that plaintiff have leave to resume her maiden name of Christine Hekking.'

No reservation whatever was made of record with reference to further proceedings in the cause, although it may be that it was in the power of the court to have entered on the heel of such a decree a further decree for alimony against parties over whom it had jurisdiction. In July 1893, defendant married again. In his answer to this suit he admits that he married in reliance on the decree of divorce. Subsequently, in March, 1896, the plaintiff prayed that the decree entered might be opened. Leave was granted, and thereupon the plaintiff filed and amended bill alleging grounds for alimony which had arisen since the original decree, and praying therefor anew. In June, 1896, without any notice to the defendant, and without attempting any, the court entered a decree as follows:

'This cause coming on to be heard upon the application of plaintiff for alimony, support, and maintenance herein, O. S. Gifford, Esq., appearing for the plaintiff, and no one opposing, findings of fact and conclusions of law having been waived, and on reading and filing the petition of plaintiff, and after considering the allegations and proofs submitted, it is, upon motion of the plaintiff's attorney, ordered and adjudged that the plaintiff be, and she hereby is, allowed the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars for her support and maintenance, said sum to be paid to her or to her attorneys by defendant immediately; and that this order or judgment be, and the same is, a part of the original judgment herein, and to take effect from the date of said judgment, to wit, the 20th day of April, 1893.

'Done at Sioux Falls, South Dakota, this 29th day of June, 1896.'

The suit in the case at bar is based on the latter decree, and seeks to recover the amount of alimony assumed to be adjudged by it. That an action of this nature will lie in the federal courts was settled in Barber v. Barber, 21 How. 582. The defendant was never a resident of the state of South Dakota; nor, so far as the proceedings decreeing a divorce and alimony are concerned, was he ever found therein; nor did the court of that state ever obtain jurisdiction over him nor did he ever appear in the proceedings, or ever waive the lack of jurisdiction, unless and except so far as can properly be deduced from the fact that after the divorce, and long prior to the proceedings in 1896, he married as already stated. The question is not, as urged on us by the plaintiff, one of mere error in a judgment entered by a court having jurisdiction, but one of the absolute want of any effect by reason of entire lack thereof. The plaintiff relies on Laing v. Rigney, 160 U.S. 531, 16 Sup.Ct. 366. A careless reading of that case might give an impression that the circumstances were substantially like those at bar; but a careful examination of it shows beyond all doubt that the question considered by the supreme court was not one of jurisdiction, but merely one of the form of proceedings as determined by the local law of the state where the judgment was rendered, and in which both parties resided when the proceedings were commenced. We do not deem it material or of value to examine in detail the decisions of the various state courts cited to us by the plaintiff, as the principles which reach this case are clearly determined by the underlying rules of the common law, and the judgments of the supreme court of the United States. That by those rules and judgments the decree of the state court for alimony would have been of no effect whatever, except for the marriage of the defendant in July, 1893, is put beyond all question. The plaintiff states her proposition to the effect that the defendantS subsequent marriage operated to validate the proceedings in the court of the state of South Dakota by the way of estoppel, waiver, or ratification, although she does not distinguish clearly upon which of these three branches of the law she specifically relies. But there are several difficulties in the way. First of all, as the state itself has an interest in the marriage, its...