Hernstadt v. Hernstadt
Decision Date | 15 February 1967 |
Docket Number | No. 311,Docket 30944.,311 |
Citation | 373 F.2d 316 |
Parties | William H. HERNSTADT, Appellant, v. Sharon S. HERNSTADT, Appellee. |
Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit |
Henry Mark Holzer, New York City, (Phyllis Tate Holzer, New York City, on the brief), for appellant.
Cherry S. Krassner, White Plains, N. Y. (Ruth C. Tachna and Tachna & Krassner, White Plains, N. Y., on the brief), for appellee.
Before MEDINA, ANDERSON and FEINBERG, Circuit Judges.
William H. Hernstadt, the former husband, appeals from the dismissal of his complaint against Sharon S. Hernstadt, his former wife, seeking a construction of those provisions of the Connecticut divorce decree which provide for the custody of the minor children and the former husband's rights of visitation. Judge Cooper concluded that the presence of the requisite amount in controversy to establish diversity jurisdiction had not been shown and further that the federal courts had no jurisdiction over matrimonial disputes. We affirm the dismissal as the District Court was clearly without subject matter jurisdiction.
Since the very early dicta In re Burrus, 136 U.S. 586, 10 S.Ct. 850, 34 L. Ed. 500 (1890), it has been uniformly held that federal courts do not adjudicate cases involving the custody of minors and, a fortiori, rights of visitation. See 1A Moore's Federal Practice, Para. 0.201; Vestal & Foster, Implied Limitations on the Diversity Jurisdiction of Federal Courts, 41 Minn.L.Rev. 1, 31-36 (1956).
Appellant seeks to avoid the impact of this sound and long-standing rule by raising a constitutional claim of full faith and credit to the Connecticut decree. When a pure question of constitutional law is presented, this Court has suggested that the District Court may assume jurisdiction even if the question arises out of a domestic relations dispute, provided the obstacle posed by the jurisdictional amount is surmounted. Southard v. Southard, 305 F.2d 730 (2 Cir. 1962). However, where the constitutional claim is frivolous, as here, the suit should be dismissed as an impermissible attempt to embroil the federal courts in matrimonial matters best left to the states.
Thus if the original judgment is subject to modification, the demands of full faith and credit may be satisfied whether or not the terms of the original decree are obeyed. In Connecticut a custody decree may be modified by the courts of that State, Conn. Gen. Stat. Section 46-23; and the Connecticut court has a continuing jurisdiction over custody matters whether the child is in the state or elsewhere, Fagan v. Fagan, 131 Conn. 688, 42 A.2d 41 (1945). Furthermore, jurisdiction was expressly reserved in the case of the divorce of the spouses now before us. Consequently, there is no full faith and credit issue in the case, Kovacs v. Brewer, supra, and the complaint...
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