Loughran v. Loughran

• Decision Date: 30 April 1934
• Docket Number: No. 565,565
• Citation: 292 U.S. 216,54 S.Ct. 684,78 L.Ed. 1219
• Parties: LOUGHRAN v. LOUGHRAN et al. *
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

292 U.S. 216

54 S.Ct. 684

78 L.Ed. 1219

LOUGHRAN

v LOUGHRAN et al.^*

No. 565.

Argued March 7, 1934.

Decided April 30, 1934.

[Syllabus intentionally omitted] Mr. Robert H. McNeill, of Washington, D.C., for petitioner.

Mr. Wm. E. Leahy, of Washington, D.C., for respondents.

Mr. Justice BRANDEIS delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case is here on certiorari (290 U.S. —-, 54 S.Ct. 209, 78 L.Ed. —-) to the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia. It is a suit in equity brought in the Supreme Court of the District in 1932, by Ruth Loughran, then resident there. The defendants are John Loughran and others, trustees of real estate there located. The estate of Daniel Loughran, Jr., deceased, is a beneficiary. The plaintiff alleges that she is Daniel's widow; and she seeks to enforce as such rights in the nature of dower and to recover unpaid alimony. She alleges that in 1926 she married Daniel in Florida after living there more than two years; that in 1927 she and her said husband established their domicile in Virginia; that in 1929, while they were residing in Virginia, she obtained there a decree of divorce from him a mensa et thoro, with an award of alimony payable monthly; and that in 1931, while she remained Daniel's wife, he died, leaving a part of the alimony unpaid.

The trustees defend on the ground that, before her marriage to Daniel, the plaintiff had been married to Henry Daye; that in 1924, while she and Daye were domiciled in the District, he had secured there an absolute divorce for her adultery with Daniel; that being the guilty party, she was by section 966 of the Code of the District 1901 (D.C. Code 1929, T. 14, § 63) prohibited from remarrying; and that, having married in violation of the statute, she is not in a position to enforce in a court of the District the alleged rights in the estate of the deceased. A copy of the record of the Daye divorce proceeding is annexed to the answer.

Section 966 (D.C. Code 1929, T. 14, § 63) provides:

'A divorce from the bond of marriage may be granted only where one of the parties has committed adultery during the marriage: Provided, That in such case the innocent party only may remarry, but nothing herein contained shall prevent the remarriage of the divorced parties to each other. * * *'

On motion of the plaintiff, the case was heard on bill and answer. The trial court entered a decree for the plaintiff in respect to the claim in the nature of dower. That decree was reversed by the Court of Appeals of the District. It ordered that the cause be remanded to the lower court for further proceedings not inconsistent with the opinion, 62 App.D.C. 262, 66 F.(2d) 567, 568, saying:

'It is unnecessary for us to concern ourselves with the legality of the Florida marriage in that state, or with the subsequent divorce proceedings in the state of Virginia, since the disposition of the case is dependent entirely upon the law of the District of Columbia. In so far as the law of the District is concerned, the marriage between plaintiff and Daniel Loughran, Jr., in Florida, if performed in the District of Columbia, would be absolutely void, and the plaintiff, being the offending party against the law of the District, is in no position to enforce any claim against the estate of Daniel Loughran, Jr., growing out of the marriage in Florida.'

Disclaiming consideration of the doctrine of clean hands, the court added:

'Plaintiff by her own unlawful conduct has placed herself without the pale of the law, and cannot be heard in a court of equity to take advantage of her own wrong.'

The trustees insist that the bill was properly dismissed because the plaintiff, retaining her domicile in the District, went to Florida and married there in order to evade the prohibition of section 966. The plaintiff contends that the admitted facts constitute no defence; that because the marriage was legal in Florida, its legality should, under the established doctrines governing conflict of laws, have been recognized by the courts of the District ; and, more over, that this was required by the full faith and credit clause, since the validity of the Florida marriage had been adjudicated by the Virginia decree of divorce a mensa et thoro.

First. Marriages not polygamous or incestuous, or otherwise declared void by statute,¹ will, if valid by the law of the state where entered into, be recognized as valid in every other jurisdiction. Meister v. Moore, 96 U.S. 76, 24 L.Ed. 826; Travers v. Reinhardt, 205 U.S. 423, 440, 27 S.Ct. 563, 51 L.Ed. 865. The mere statutory prohibition by the State of the domicile either generally of the remarriage of a divorced person, or of remarriage within a prescribed period after the entry of the decree, is given only territorial effect. Such a statute does not invalidate a marriage solemnized in another state in conformity with the laws thereof.²

Second. We have no occasion to decide what the rights of the parties would be if it appeared that the plaintiff and her paramour, retaining at all times their domicile in the District, had gone to Florida for the purpose of evading section 966 by a marriage there; and had then returned to the District to live as man and wife.³ It is argued that marriage within the District would have been illegal because prohibited by section 966; and that a marriage which would be illegal if entered into within the District must be treated under section 1287 (D.C. Code 1929, T. 14, § 5) as void, even if valid under the law of the state in which it was solemnized. But section 1287 has no application to marriages in violation of the prohibition of section 966. Section 1287 provides:

'If any marriage declared illegal by the aforegoing sections shall be entered into in another jurisdiction by persons having and retaining their domicile in the District of Columbia, such marriage shall be deemed illegal, and may be decreed to be void in said District in the same manner as if it had been celebrated therein.'

The sections preceding section 1287 relate solely to marriages void, because incestuous or polygamous, and to those which are voidable, because entered into by a person who was a lunatic, under the age of consent, or impotent, and those which are voidable because procured by force or fraud. In the case at bar, there is no suggestion of any such obstacle to the validity of the marriage. The only objection urged is that by marrying in Florida the plaintiff violated section 966. But the preceding sections do not refer to section 966; and they contain no reference to remarriage of divorced persons. Their only reference to divorce is in paragraph third of section 1283 (D.C. Code 1929, T. 14, § 1) which declares void:

'The marriage of any persons either of whom has been previously married and whose previous marriage has not been terminated by death or a decree of divorce.'

Since the plaintiff had been legally divorced from Daye in the District while the parties were domiciled there, and the decree became effective under section 983a (D.C. Code 1929, T. 14, § 81) unconditionally and irrevocably, she was thereafter an unmarried woman; and, if she had cohabited with Daniel in the District after the Florida marriage, she would not have been guilty of polygamy. Commonwealth v. Lane, 113 Mass. 458, 460, 462, 18 Am.Rep. 509.

Moreover, it does not appear that the plaintiff and Daniel did retain their domiciles in the District after her divorce, or that after the Florida marriage they ever lived in the District as man and wife. The trustees argue that it must be assumed on the pleadings that plaintiff's resi- dence in Florida and the marriage there were not in good faith.⁴ But the bill alleged the good faith of the residence and marriage in Florida; and the answer contains no specific denial of that allegation. Nor does it contain any averment that the residence in Florida and marriage there were with the intent of evading the prohibition against remarriage.⁵ The Court of Appeals did not pass upon the issue sought to be raised. It expressly disclaimed deciding whether the Florida marriage was valid or what the effect of the Virginia decree was. And the question whether the marriage in Florida should be deemed void within the District because the parties went to Florida to evade the prohibition of section 966 was not presented by the petition for a writ of certiorari.

Third. The Court of Appeals stated that 'the single question for determination here is whether or not the plaintiff is entitled to her dower interest'; and it held that the bill should be dismissed, regardless of whether the marriage was valid under the law of Florida. The requisites of dower are a valid marriage; seizin of the husband; and his death. It may be assumed that the law of the situs of real estate determines whether a widow is entitled to dower. Compare De Vaughn v. Hutchinson, 165 U.S. 566, 570, 17 S.Ct. 461, 41 L.Ed. 827. But, if the marriage was valid under the laws of Florida, the plaintiff was, under established doctrines of the conflict of laws, Daniel's widow. As such she was entitled, as an incident of the marriage, to dower in the property within the District. For, while a statute of the District provides for forfeiture of dower in case of the wife's adultery during marriage,⁶ none denies dower to a widow because she had been guilty of adultery prior to the marriage with her late husband.

Section 966 is not extraterritorial in its operation. It does not purport to prohibit remarriage outside the District; and no other statute denies dower to a widow because by remarrying elsewhere she had disregarded the prohibition contained in section 966. It does not make remarriage a crime, or in terms impose any penalty, even if contracted within the District; and obviously it could not make criminal remarriage elsewhere. Nor does it in terms declare the remarriage void. Apparently, it is the law of the District that a remarriage elsewhere in disregard of the...