Reed v. Reed
| Decision Date | 20 December 1883 |
| Citation | 52 Mich. 117,17 N.W. 720 |
| Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
| Parties | REED v. REED. |
The federal constitution requires full faith and credit to be given by each state to the records and judicial proceedings of the other states; but cases wherein the court had no jurisdiction--and this fact may always be shown--are not within the federal protection, and, there being no authority to make the record, the proceedings are not judicial.
Where a husband leaves this state to avoid service of legal papers upon him, and remains awhile in another state for the mere purpose of securing a divorce, and has testimony secretly taken here, where his wife continued to reside, and he himself returns after procuring the divorce, he does not acquire residence in the foreign state, and as the laws of other states do not pretend to divorce citizens of this state, the decree thus fraudulently obtained is without authority and does not bind the wife.
A suit for support brought after 13 years of separation, and in opposition to the wishes of the husband, involves the question of the justification of the original separation, and as this must be imperfect after such a time, the suit should be dismissed for laches.
Appeal from St. Clair.
Elliott G. Stevenson, Isaac Marston, and John Atkinson, for complainant.
Frank Whipple and C.A. Kent, for defendant and appellant.
Suit in equity to compel the defendant to furnish support to the complainant, who claims to be his wife. It is instituted under the act of 1873, which authorizes such a suit when the husband, without good and sufficient cause, shall desert his wife, or, being of sufficient ability to support her shall refuse or neglect to properly provide for and suitably maintain her. Pub.Acts 1873, p. 203. Most of the material facts in the case are not in dispute. The parties were married in Canada in the year 1850. The defendant was by trade a currier, and neither he nor his wife had property. He worked at his trade three or four years and then began privately to read medical books. In 1857 he went to Terre Haute, Indiana where he held himself out as a physician for about a year, but meeting with little success went back to Canada, locating at a place called Madoc. In 1861 he moved to Port Huron, in this state, and there the parties lived together as husband and wife until December, 1861, when complainant separated from her husband, and they have not lived together since. Three children, two boys and a girl had been born to the parties, and the mother took the girl when she left. The father provided for the separate board of the boys for a time, but in the course of the next year they went to their mother and remained with her until they came of age. The daughter has always lived with her mother, and for more than ten years has been blind and helpless. One of the sons is dead; the other is married and has a family.
Defendant contributed to the support of his wife and children for three or four years after separation, but the parties disagree as to the extent of the aid furnished. In the fall of 1865 defendant went to Cincinnati, where he took a course of medical lectures. The immediate occasion for complainant leaving defendant was a charge she brought against him of adultery with one Mrs. Woodcock. In the summer of 1864 she filed a bill for a divorce on this ground, and proceedings were had in the case for two years or so, but it never was brought to a hearing. In January, 1867, defendant filed a bill against his wife for a divorce on the ground of desertion. Meantime complainant had another ground of complaint against him, for an alleged improper intimacy with a Mrs. Jones. When he filed his bill for divorce, complainant immediately took steps to have him arrested for failure to support his family, and, this coming to his knowledge, he secretly left Port Huron, going first to Canada, then to Toledo, and from there to Terre Haute, where he again offered his services to the public as a physician.
It appears by the testimony on both sides that defendant had had no thought of changing his residence up to the time of his leaving Port Huron, and that when he left the sole purpose was to avoid the service of process. He took pains that a knowledge of his whereabouts should not come to his wife, and he had goods which were sent to him from Port Huron billed to Toledo, and from there reshipped, that the direction at Port Huron might not disclose his place of stay. After reaching Terre Haute he was advised that if he would stay there a year he could get a divorce, and he therefore remained until the year was up, and then filed his bill. In the mean time, however, he had had a friend approach his wife to ascertain if their controversies could be settled, so that he could go back in peace, but his overtures were unsuccessful.
The cause assigned for divorce in the Indiana bill was desertion. Summons upon this bill was issued February 25, 1868, and returned non est the same day. Two weeks later a notice was filed with the clerk of the Indiana court that the plaintiff in that cause would take the testimony of witnesses at a law office specified in Port Huron on April 2, 1868, between the hours of 8 in the morning and 6 in the afternoon. Pursuant to this notice, which it is manifest it was not intended the party concerned would ever see, the testimony of the plaintiff's legal adviser at Port Huron was taken, and this so completely made out the plaintiff's case that, as he ingenuously informs us, his Terre Haute counsel told him it was strong enough "to divorce half the women in Indiana." Probably by this was meant that by a like secret process a case could be made out against half the married couples in any community; and very likely that would be true. On filing this testimony and proving in open court that he had his residence in Terre Haute, the plaintiff was awarded his divorce. The proof of residence was made by some woman he had seen at a boarding-house, but with whom he professed to have only a casual acquaintance. The decree purporting to grant a divorce bears date April 28, 1868. The wife had no notice or knowledge of the Indiana proceedings until after this conclusion, and the only public notice which was given was published in a Terre Haute newspaper for three weeks, commencing February 26, 1868.
In a little over two months from the time he procured his Indiana divorce this defendant was practicing medicine as a resident of Port Huron again, and 19 days after his arrival in that city he had gone through the ceremony of marriage with Mrs. Jones, though, if his evidence is true, no communication whatever had passed between him and her from the time of his clandestine departure from Port Huron until his return. After returning he gave no aid to complainant or to their blind and helpless daughter. The present suit was begun November 29, 1881, and the decree made in it awards to complainant an annual allowance of $365. The sum named is sufficiently moderate if, under the circumstance, any sum at all should be awarded.
The defendant appeals, and relies for a reversal of the decree upon the proposition that at the time the suit was instituted the complainant was not his wife, the marriage bonds between them having been dissolved by the Indiana divorce. "Full faith and credit," it is said, is required to be given to the record of this divorce by the express provision of the federal constitution, and it is not...
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