Lacks v. Lacks

Decision Date20 December 1976
Citation390 N.Y.S.2d 875,41 N.Y.2d 71
Parties, 359 N.E.2d 384 Harold G. LACKS, Respondent, v. Irene R. LACKS, Appellant.
CourtNew York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Myrna Felder, New York City, for appellant.

Samuel Gottlieb, Emanuel Baetich, Eugene H. Feldman and Milton Shalleck, New York City, for respondent.

BREITEL, Chief Judge.

Defendant wife in a protracted litigation, one of several between the parties, by post-judgment motion sought to set aside the final judgment of divorce against her on the ground that the court never had subject matter jurisdiction (CPLR 5015, subd. (a), par. 4). Plaintiff husband started the action, originally only for a separation, in August, 1965. After an appeal and two trials the husband obtained the judgment of divorce in 1970. The Appellate Division affirmed that judgment in 1972, and both that court and this denied leave to appeal to the Court of Appeals. Special Term, in 1975, granted the wife's motion to set aside the judgment, but the Appellate Division modified the order by denying the motion and reinstating the final judgment of divorce. Defendant wife appeals.

In the postjudgment motion, by a newly retained lawyer, made four years after the final judgment and almost two years after appeal had been exhausted, the wife argued that the Supreme Court had been without subject matter jurisdiction. There had been failure, she contended, to satisfy the durational residence requirement by the husband in order for him to obtain a divorce under the State's liberal divorce laws enacted while the action was pending. Her theory is that the Supreme Court's jurisdiction in matrimonial actions for separation and divorce is exclusively statutory and absent the basic facts upon which to ground such actions the court is without subject matter jurisdiction, which, she argues, may never be cured, waived, or overcome. The issue is, therefore, whether, as the wife argues, the residence requirements in matrimonial actions, often described as jurisdictional, involve a kind of subject matter jurisdiction without which a court is powerless to render a valid judgment.

The order of the Appellate Division should be affirmed. Just as one of the statutory grounds in section 170 of the Domestic Relations Law must exist to obtain a divorce, the existence of at least one of the connections with the State set forth in section 230 of the same law is equally essential. The requirements of section 230, however, go only to the substance of the divorce cause of action, not to the competence of the court to adjudicate the cause. Hence, a divorce judgment granted in the absence of one of the specified connections with the State, even if erroneously determined as a matter of law or fact, is not subject to vacatur under CPLR 5015 (subd. (a), par. 4). Of course, for the judgment to be invulnerable in other States of the Union the minimal contacts with the State required under Federal constitutional standards, and satisfied in this case, must also be present (see Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U.S. 393, 407--408, 95 S.Ct. 553, 42 L.Ed.2d 532; Williams v. North Carolina, 325 U.S. 226, 229--230, 65 S.Ct. 1092, 89 L.Ed. 1577). On this view, the court need not decide whether, in this case, the requirements of section 230 were in fact met.

The parties were married in New York in 1938. After an apparently turbulent marriage, marked since 1953 by a series of bitter litigations, the husband, on August 10, 1965, began this action for a separation on the ground of cruelty. After nonjury trial, Supreme Court, on June 28, 1967, dismissed the complaint, but, on March 26, 1968, the Appellate Division reversed, and ordered a new trial. At the second trial, plaintiff husband, in reliance upon the then recent liberalizing changes in the divorce law, added a prayer for a judgment of absolute divorce, on the same allegations and proof as the earlier cause for separation. The husband was granted a judgment of divorce on March 16, 1970, and, after modifications not now relevant, the judgment was affirmed by the Appellate Division on October 26, 1972. Leave to appeal to the Court of Appeals was denied by both the Appellate Division and this court. The final judgment was thus beyond further review.

Then, nearly two years later, defendant, through her most recently retained lawyer, moved to vacate the judgment, contending that the court had been without subject matter jurisdiction to entertain the divorce action. She argued that the husband had not been a resident of New York for a full year preceding the commencement of the original action, and that the court had thus erroneously granted a divorce judgment in violation of the provisions of section 230. This defect, she urged, deprived the court of subject matter jurisdiction, and all the proceedings and the judgment were a nullity.

There are complications of fact and law of only marginal relevance. For example, when the original separation action was begun there was no durational residence requirement for seeking either a separation or a divorce, but divorce was then available only on the ground of adultery. When the Domestic Relations Law was amended to liberalize the grounds for divorce, evidently to prevent the courts of this State from becoming 'divorce mills', a durational residence requirement was imposed. The wife has repeatedly changed lawyers and there have been multiple actions in this State, Florida, Puerto Rico, and France. During the years of the multiple litigations, the husband moved to Puerto Rico, to France, returned to New York, and then moved to Florida. He recently remarried. While these factors have contributed to a swollen and confused record, they have no direct bearing on the principal issue: whether an otherwise valid divorce judgment depends, jurisdictionally, upon a correct determination of the statutory residence requirements, that is, whether the competence of the court depends upon a correct determination of the residence requirements.

The confusion, if there be confusion, starts with a line of decisions dating back to the last century and continuing into the present in which this court has said with less than perfect meticulousness that 'jurisdiction' of New York courts in matrimonial cases is limited to the powers conferred by statute (Matter of Seitz v. Drogheo, 21 N.Y.2d 181, 185, 287 N.Y.S.2d 29, 31, 234 N.E.2d 209, 211; Langerman v. Langerman, 303 N.Y. 465, 469--471, 104 N.E.2d 857, 858--859; Caldwell v. Caldwell, 298 N.Y. 146, 152, 81 N.E.2d 60, 63; Ackerman v. Ackerman, 200 N.Y. 72, 76, 93 N.E. 192, 194; Walker v. Walker, 155 N.Y. 77, 80, 49 N.E. 663, 664; Erkenbrach v. Erkenbrach, 96 N.Y. 456, 463--465). Jurisdiction is a word of elastic, diverse, and disparate meanings (see Nuernberger v. State, 41 N.Y.2d 111, 390 N.Y.S.2d 904, 359 N.E.2d 412, decided herewith).

A statement that a court lacks 'jurisdiction' to decide a case may, in reality, mean that elements of a cause of action are absent (see, e.g., McNamara v. Allstate Ins. Co., 3 A.D.2d 295, 299, 160 N.Y.S.2d 51, 55). Similarly, questions of mootness and standing of parties may be characterized as raising questions of subject matter jurisdiction (see, e.g., Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U.S. 393, 398, 402, 95 S.Ct. 553, 42 L.Ed.2d 532, Supra; Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447, 484--485, 43 S.Ct. 597, 67 L.Ed. 1078). But these are not the kinds of judicial infirmities to which CPLR 5015 (subd. (a), par. 4) is addressed. That provision is designed to preserve objections so fundamental to the power of adjudication of a court that they survive even a final judgment or order (see, generally, 5 Weinstein-Korn-Miller, N.Y. Civ.Prac., par. 5015.10).

In Thrasher v. United States Liab. Ins. Co., 19 N.Y.2d 159, 166, 278 N.Y.S.2d 793, 798, 225 N.E.2d 503, 506, this court, in discussing subject matter jurisdiction, drew a clear distinction between a court's competence to entertain an action and its power to render a judgment on the merits (accord Burnet v. Desmornes, 226 U.S. 145, 147, 33 S.Ct. 63, 57 L.Ed. 159 (Holmes, J.)). Absence of competence to entertain an action deprives the court of 'subject matter jurisdiction'; absence of power to reach the merits does not.

The implications of this distinction are serious. It is blackletter law that a judgment rendered without subject matter jurisdiction is void, and that the defect may be raised at any time and may not be waived (see 21 C.J.S. Courts §§ 108--110, 116). Thus stated, the rule is grossly oversimple. The problem requires better analysis, and one long overdue (see, e.g., Dobbs, Validation of Void Judgments: Bootstrap Principle, 53 Va.L.Rev. 1003, 1241). Nevertheless, the breadth with which the rule is often stated indicates the importance traditionally attached...

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