Taylor v. Taylor

• Decision Date: 26 November 1969
• Docket Number: No. 41849,41849
• Citation: 254 N.E.2d 445,44 Ill.2d 139
• Parties: Elsie TAYLOR, Appellee, v. John F. TAYLOR. (Signal Oil and Gas Company, Appellant.)
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

Page 445

254 N.E.2d 445

44 Ill.2d 139

Elsie TAYLOR, Appellee, v. John F. TAYLOR. (Signal Oil and Gas Company, Appellant.)

No. 41849.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Nov. 26, 1969.

Rehearing Denied Jan. 26, 1970.

Lord, Bissell & Brook, Chicago (R.R. McMahan and Joseph E. Coughlin, Chicago, of counsel), for appellant.

Bernard Kaufman and Donald C. Schiller, Chicago, for appellee.

WARD, Justice.

A decree of divorce was entered on October 1, 1961, against John Taylor in the superior court (now, the circuit court) of Cook County which dissolved the marriage between Taylor and Elsie Taylor who is the appellee here. The decree awarded the appellee permanent alimony of $175 per month. Taylor paid this obligation until February 1967, when he was transferred by his employer, Signal Oil and Gas Company, the appellant, from its Illinois office to its office in Houston, Texas. The appellee on October 4, 1967, obtained a judgment against Taylor in the circuit court of Cook County for $1309, which represented arrearages in alimony. She then instituted proceedings against the appellant, Signal Oil and Gas Company, (hereafter, Signal,) to satisfy the judgment under the Illinois Wage Deduction Act (Ill.Rev.Stat.1967, ch. 62, par. 71 Et seq.), and on October 16, 1967, Signal was served with a wage deduction summons. In its answer Signal stated that it had paid Taylor wages of $1758 per month for October and November, 1967. It stated, too, that commencing November 1, 1967, Taylor had been paid in advance for services to be rendered by him. Signal claimed that it was entitled to a set off for the amount of this advance, which was not, it said, subject to a wage deduction order. Signal also asked that the suit be dismissed on the ground that Taylor had obtained from the district court of Harris County, Texas, an order enjoining Signal from discontinuing the payment of his wages, interfering with their payment and from communicating any information relative to his salary. This order was founded on the laws of Texas which prohibit the garnishment of wages. The circuit court of Cook County entered judgment for the appellee against Signal for $1309, the amount of the judgment for arrearages. It specially found that in October, 1967, and prior thereto, Taylor had been paid by Signal at the end of each month and commencing in November, 1967, Taylor had been paid in advance monthly for his services.

The first contention made on this appeal by Signal is that the full-faith-and-credit clause of the United States constitution required the trial court to honor the public policy expressed in the laws of Texas which prohibits the garnishment of wages. Relatedly, it is also contended that the Illinois Wage Deduction Act, which limits the recognition of exemptions to those allowed under the Act, is violative of the full-faith-and-credit clause. The section on exemptions (Ill.Rev.Stat.1967, ch. 62, par. 73) provides in part: 'This exemption (and no other) applies irrespective of the place where the compensation was earned or payable and the State where the employee resides.'

The answer to both contentions is that generally the exemptions applied in garnishment proceedings have been judged to be part of the remedy of garnishment and not part of the original debt. They have been generally considered to be governed by the law of the forum of the proceedings. (See Leflar, American Conflicts of Law, §§ 45, 122; Chicago Rock Island and Pacific R.R. Co. v. Sturm, 174 U.S. 710, 19 S.Ct. 797, 43 L.Ed. 1144; Armour Fertilizer Works v. Sanders (5th cir.), 63 F.2d 902; 292 U.S. 190, 54 S.Ct. 677, 78 L.Ed. 1206.) Whatever qualifications may exist to this general rule, it seems undoubted that where the creditor is a resident of the forum and the debtor is not, as here, there is no requirement under the full-faith-and-credit clause that the debtor be permitted to invoke the exemption laws of his domicile. (See Unconstitutional Discrimination in the Conflicts of Laws; Equal Protection, 28 U.Chi.L.Rev. 1, 24.) The trial court did not err in applying the Illinois law to the exclusion of the law of Texas.

Signal cites Coleman for use of Haberman v. American Sheet and Tin Plate Co., 285 Ill.App. 542, 548, 551, 2 N.E.2d 349, 352, contending that the Appellate Court of Illinois there considered issues similar to those here and found that the law of the foreign jurisdiction was entitled to full faith and credit. In fact, the question there was dissimilar. In Coleman, an Indiana resident and employee of a corporation doing business in Indiana and Illinois, gave a wage assignment to an Illinois merchant as security for a credit purchase. Illinois permitted wage assignments but Indiana did not. The court held that the Indiana prohibition against wage assignments was a complete defense to an action in Illinois upon a wage assignment. The court, in considering whether the debtor had a right relative to his wages which could be transferred to another, stated: 'Whether such a right under his contract of employment was capable of effective assignment is determined by the law of the place of making that contract. * * * Where a contract of employment is made and is to be...