Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/356/604/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 18:24:49+00:00

Document:
In 1951, a New York court granted petitioner's husband a divorce and awarded custody of their five-year-old daughter to her paternal grandfather, who removed the child to North Carolina, where she has since resided. In a proceeding in 1954, the New York court modified its decree and granted custody to the mother. Fourteen months later, the mother sued in North Carolina for custody of the child, presenting a certified copy of the New York decree and claiming that it was entitled to "full faith and credit" in North Carolina, "except as to matters showing changed circumstances since the date of such decree." The North Carolina trial court found that the welfare of the child demanded that she remain in her grandfather's custody, and held that it was not bound to give effect to the New York decree. The Supreme Court of North Carolina sustained the trial court, declaring, apparently as an alternative ground of decision, that the New York decree was not binding because the divorce court had no jurisdiction to modify its original custody award after the child had become a resident and domiciliary of North Carolina.
Held: the case is remanded to the North Carolina Supreme Court for clarification of its holding, so that the courts of that State may have an opportunity to determine the issue of changed circumstances if they have not already done so. Pp. 356 U. S. 604-608.
245 N.C. 630, 97 S.E.2d 96, judgment vacated and cause remanded.
grandfather, pending discharge of Brewer, Jr., from the Navy. As contemplated by the decree, the grandfather removed the child to his home in North Carolina, where she has since resided. In November, 1954, the mother asked the New York divorce court to modify its decree and award her custody of the child. Although the father and grandfather presented affidavits through counsel challenging the mother's claim, the court granted custody to her. In modifying its decree, the court apparently relied in part on findings that the grandfather was ill with heart trouble and diabetes, and that the living accommodations which he was able to provide for the child were not as suitable as those then offered by the mother.
"entitled to full faith and credit in the courts of North Carolina except as to matters showing changed circumstances since the date of such decree."
After hearing the case on affidavits, stipulations, and the pleadings, the trial court made numerous findings. Among other things, it determined that, for more than a year immediately preceding the hearing, the grandfather had required no medical care for heart or diabetic ailments, and was able to work and to properly care for his granddaughter. The court also found that a 17-year-old stepson, who had been residing in the grandfather's home at the time the New York decree was modified, had moved from the home, thus leaving more space for the remaining occupants and giving the grandfather a better opportunity to provide for the grandchild. On the basis of these and other findings the trial court concluded that it was "not bound by or required to give effect to the decree of the Court of the State of New York made in 1954," and that the welfare of the child demanded that she remain under the grandfather's custody in the environment to which she had become accustomed.
certiorari to consider the claim that the North Carolina courts had failed to give full faith and credit to the judicial proceedings of another State. 355 U.S. 810.
"that the State of the forum has at least as much leeway to disregard the judgment, to qualify it, or to depart from it as does the State where it was rendered."
that a custody decree is not res judicata in New York if changed circumstances call for a different arrangement to protect the child's health and welfare. [Footnote 5] In the courts below, the question of changed circumstances was raised in the pleadings, considerable evidence was introduced on that issue, and the trial court made a number of findings which demonstrated that the facts material to the proper custody of the child were no longer the same in 1956 as in 1954, when the New York decree was modified. And though it is not clear from the opinion of the North Carolina Supreme Court, it may be, particularly in view of this background, that it intended to decide the case at least alternatively, on that basis. Under all the circumstances, we think it advisable to remand to the North Carolina courts for clarification, and, if they have not already decided, so they may have an opportunity to determine the issue of changed circumstances. Cf. Minnesota v. National Tea Co., 309 U. S. 551; Spector Motor Co. v. McLaughlin, 323 U. S. 101, 323 U. S. 105. If those courts properly find that changed conditions make it to the child's best interest for the grandfather to have custody, decision of the constitutional questions now before us would be unnecessary. Those questions we explicitly reserve without expressly or impliedly indicating any views about them.
The judgment of the Supreme Court of North Carolina is vacated, and the cause is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
"custody of children of parents who have been divorced outside of North Carolina . . . may be determined in a special proceeding instituted by either of said parents. . . ."
Unlike the situation in the New York modification proceeding, the child, father, and grandfather were all present before the North Carolina court.
"shall have the same full faith and credit in every court within the United States and its Territories and Possessions as they have by law or usage in the courts of such State, Territory or Possession from which they are taken."
This approach is reinforced here by the fact that neither the father nor the grandfather appeared or submitted a brief in this Court in support of their right to custody.
There is some indication that, in New York, a local custody decree may be modified whenever the best interest of the child demands, whether there have been changed circumstances or not. See, e.g., 6A Gilbert-Bliss' N.Y.Civ.Prac., 1944, § 1170. Cf. Bachman v. Majias, 1 N.Y.2d 575, 580, 154 N.Y.S.2d 903, 906, 136 N.E.2d 866, 868; Sutera v. Sutera, 1 A.D.2d 356, 358, 150 N.Y.S.2d 448, 451, 452.
At stake in this case is the welfare of a child. More immediately, the question before us is what restriction, if any, does the Constitution of the United States impose on a state court when it is determining the custody of a child before it. The contest here for the child's custody is between her mother and her grandparents -- a mother whom a New York court, in divorce proceedings while the child was present in New York, did not find to be a suitable custodian, and the grandparents, living in North Carolina, to whom the New York court decreed the custody of the child and with whom the child, now twelve years of age, has lived happily for the last six and one-half years. A second New York decree, rendered while the child was in North Carolina, awarded her custody to the mother. A North Carolina court, after a full hearing, with all the relevant parties, including the child, before it, has found that the child's welfare precludes severance of the child's custody from the grandparents.
present time. Brewer, Jr., the child's father and respondent's son, is still in the Navy.
"[t]he accommodations and surround[ing]s of the mother are acceptable for the welfare of the infant, and would be more desirable for an eight-year-old girl, whose bringing up belongs to her mother."
Supreme Court of North Carolina affirmed, 245 N.C. 630, 97 S.E.2d 96, holding that, since the child was not before the New York court when it rendered the 1954 decree, that decree was without extraterritorial effect.
While there is substantial accord among the courts as to the practical outcome of cases involving the extraterritorial effect of custody decrees, there has been no little confusion and lack of clarity in the language they have employed in justifying those results. The uncritical reliance of courts, in dealing with the problem raised by this case, upon such concepts as "change of circumstances" has led one learned commentator to remark that "words have been the chief troublemakers in this field." Stansbury, Custody and Maintenance Law Across State Lines, 10 Law & Contemp. Prob. 819, 826. Although the question presented here is a narrow one, it is of a kind that confronts state courts with great frequency: does the Federal Constitution require North Carolina to give effect to the second New York decree, awarding custody of the child to the petitioner? The evident implication of the Court's opinion today is that, unless "circumstances have changed" since the latter decree, it must be given full faith and credit.
with the responsibility of determining the proper custody of children, a more important consideration asserts itself to which regard for curbing litigious strife is subordinated -- namely, the welfare of the child. That, in the familiar phrase used by the Supreme Court of North Carolina in this case, "is the polar star by which the courts must be guided in awarding custody." 245 N.C. at 635, 97 S.E.2d at 100-101. When the care and protection of the minors within their borders falls to States, they must be free to do "what is best for the interest of the child," Finlay v. Finlay, 240 N.Y. 429, 433, 148 N.E. 624, 626 (1925) (per Cardozo, J.); see Queen v. Gyngall,  2 Q.B. 232, 241 ("The Court is placed in a position . . . to act as supreme parent of children, and must exercise that jurisdiction in the manner in which a wise, affectionate, and careful parent would act for the welfare of the child").
105 N.Y. 628, 11 N.E. 143, 144 (1887) (Illinois custody decree was "a fact or circumstance bearing upon the discretion to be exercised without dictating or controlling it").
In short, both the underlying purpose of the Full Faith and Credit Clause and the nature of the decrees militate strongly against a constitutionally enforced requirement of respect to foreign custody decrees. New York itself, the State for whose decree full faith and credit is here demanded, has rejected the applicability of that requirement to custody decrees. See, e.g., Bachman v. Mejias, 1 N.Y.2d 575, 580, 154 N.Y.S.2d 903, 906, 136 N.E.2d 866, 868 (1956) ("The full faith and credit clause does not apply to custody decrees"); People ex rel. Herzog v. Morgan, 287 N.Y. 317, 320, 39 N.E.2d 255, 256 (1942); People ex rel. Allen v. Allen, supra; Hicks v. Bridges, 2 A.D.2d 335, 339, 155 N.Y.S.2d 746, 751 (1956); People ex rel. Kniffin v. Knight, 184 Misc. 545, 550, 56 N.Y.S.2d 108, 113 (1945). And writers on the subject have observed a marked tendency among other state courts to arrive at this same conclusion, although often spelling out their judgments in traditional terms. See Ehrenzweig, Interstate Recognition of Custody Decrees, 51 Mich.L.Rev. 345; Stansbury, supra.
nexus between court and child that must exist before the court's award of the child's custody should carry and authority is that the court should have been in a position adequately to inform itself regarding the needs and desires of the child, of what is in the child's best interests. And the very least that should be expected in order that the investigation be responsibly thorough and enlightening is that the child be physically within the jurisdiction of the court and so available as a source for arriving at Solomon's judgment. See Stumberg, The Status of Children in the Conflict of Laws, 8 U. of Chi.L.Rev. 42, 56, 58, 62. To dispense with this requirement is seriously to undermine the conscientious efforts that most state courts expend to carry out their functions in child custody cases in a responsible way.
"[a]s a finding of changed conditions is one easily made when a court is so inclined, and plausible grounds therefor can quite generally be found, it follows that the recognition extraterritorially which custody orders will receive or can command is liable to be more theoretical than of great practical consequence."
Morrill v. Morrill, 83 Conn. 479, 492-493, 77 A. 1, 6 (1910). See also Stumberg, Principles of Conflict of Laws (2d ed.), 328-329.
This Court should indeed be rigorous in avoiding constitutional issues where a reasonable alternative exists. But a constitutional issue cannot be, and is not, avoided when a ruling is made that necessarily -- and not the less because it does so impliedly -- includes it. To what end must the Supreme Court of North Carolina justify its determination that the child should remain with her grandfather, by finding that there has been a change from the conditions under which the New York decree was rendered, unless, in default of such a justification, that court must be held to have disregarded its constitutional duty to give full faith and credit to the New York decree? If this construction as to the extraterritorial enforceability of the in absentia New York decree is not the necessarily implied meaning of today's decision, it can mean only that this Court is enforcing the local North Carolina law of conflicts as to the respect to be paid the prior New York decree.
the case to the state court for a clarifying opinion or an appropriate certificate. But surely it cannot be said of the decision under review, as was true in Minnesota v. National Tea Co., 309 U. S. 551, 309 U. S. 555, that "there is considerable uncertainty as to the precise grounds for the decision [of the state court]." Any uncertainty is here interpolated; the North Carolina opinion carries no ambiguity. When this case goes back to the North Carolina Supreme Court, that court, with entire respect for this Court's action, accepting the Court's formal disavowal, may say it rightfully exercised its jurisdiction under local law in not being concerned with "changed circumstances" relating to the absentee New York decree of 1954, because the North Carolina court, with the child before it, on its view of controlling North Carolina law, need justify its custodial decree only by considering whether the child's interests require a change in its custody from the present propitious circumstances. And this for the reason that the Court purports not to suggest to the North Carolina court its duty under the United States Constitution to respect the New York decree of 1954 unless there be a finding that the circumstances on which that decree was based have changed.
I would affirm the judgment of the Supreme Court of North Carolina.
"13. That the petitioner, Aida Kovacs, is not a fit and proper person to have the care, custody and control of the minor, Jane Elizabeth Brewer."
"14. That George A. Brewer, Sr. is a man of excellent character, good habits and conduct, and is a fit and suitable person to have the care, custody and control of the minor, Jane Elizabeth Brewer."
"15. That the welfare, interest and development of the child will be materially promoted by allowing her to remain in the custody of George A. Brewer, Sr., and in the environment to which she has become accustomed and upon which in a measure she depends."

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