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Timestamp: 2017-03-29 15:26:39
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Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1170', '§ 1170', '§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 1170']

Vanderbilt v. Vanderbilt (full text) :: 354 U.S. 416 (1957) :: Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center Log In
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Vanderbilt v. Vanderbilt 354 U.S. 416 (1957)
U.S. Supreme CourtVanderbilt v. Vanderbilt, 354 U.S. 416 (1957)Vanderbilt v. VanderbiltNo. 302Argued April 22-23, 1957Decided June 24, 1957354 U.S. 416CERTIORARI TO THE COURT OF APPEALS OF NEW YORK AND
Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., petitioner, and Patricia Vanderbilt, respondent, were married in 1948. They separated in 1952 while living in California. The wife moved to New York, where she has resided since February, 1953. In March of that year, the husband filed suit for Page 354 U. S. 417 divorce in Nevada. This proceeding culminated, in June, 1953, with a decree of final divorce which provided that both husband and wife were "freed and released from the bonds of matrimony and all the duties and obligations thereof. . . ." [Footnote 1] The wife was not served with process in Nevada, and did not appear before the divorce court.
In April, 1954, Mrs. Vanderbilt instituted an action in a New York court praying for separation from petitioner and for alimony. The New York court did not have personal jurisdiction over him, but, in order to satisfy his obligations, if any, to Mrs. Vanderbilt, it sequestered his property within the State. [Footnote 2] He appeared specially and, among other defenses to the action, contended that the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the United States Constitution [Footnote 3] compelled the New York court to treat the Nevada divorce as having ended the marriage and as having destroyed any duty of support which he owed the respondent. While the New York court found the Nevada decree valid and held that it had effectively dissolved the marriage, it nevertheless entered an order, under § 1170-b Page 354 U. S. 418 of the New York Civil Practice Act, [Footnote 4] directing petitioner to make designated support payments to respondent. 207 Misc. 294, 138 N.Y.S.2d 222. The New York Court of Appeals upheld the support order. 1 N.Y.2d 342, 135 N.E.2d 553. Petitioner then applied to this Court for certiorari, contending that § 1170-b, as applied, is unconstitutional because it contravenes the Full Faith and Credit Clause. [Footnote 5] We granted certiorari, 352 U.S. 820.
In Estin v. Estin, 334 U. S. 541, this Court decided that a Nevada divorce court, which had no personal jurisdiction over the wife, had no power to terminate a husband's obligation to provide her support as required in a preexisting New York separation decree. The factor which distinguishes the present case from Estin is that here, the wife's right to support had not been reduced to judgment prior to the husband's ex parte divorce. In our opinion, this difference is not material on the question before us. Since the wife was not subject to its jurisdiction, the Nevada divorce court had no power to extinguish any right which she had under the law of New York to financial support from her husband. It has long been the constitutional rule that a court cannot adjudicate a personal claim or obligation unless it has jurisdiction over the person of the defendant. [Footnote 6] Here, the Nevada divorce court Page 354 U. S. 419 was as powerless to cut off the wife's support right as it would have been to order the husband to pay alimony if the wife had brought the divorce action and he had not been subject to the divorce court's jurisdiction. Therefore, the Nevada decree, to the extent it purported to affect the wife's right to support, was void, and the Full Faith and Credit Clause did not obligate New York to give it recognition. [Footnote 7]
The question in this case is whether Nevada, which was empowered to grant petitioner a divorce without personal jurisdiction over respondent that must be respected, by command of the Constitution, by every other State, Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U. S. 287, Page 354 U. S. 420 was at the same time empowered, by virtue of its domiciliary connection with petitioner, to make, incidental to its dissolution of the marriage, an adjudication denying alimony to which sister States must also give full faith and credit. Whatever the answer to the question may be, Estin v. Estin, 334 U. S. 541, does not supply it. What the Court now states to be "not material" was crucial to the decision in that case, namely, the prior New York support order, which the Court held Nevada was required to respect by virtue of the Full Faith and Credit Clause, Art. IV, § 1, of the Constitution. That this fact was crucial to the Court's decision in that case is made clear by the Court's reference to the prior New York judgment in its two statements of the question presented more than a half dozen times throughout the course of its opinion. The Court rightly regarded the fact as crucial because of the requirement of Art. IV, § 1, that Nevada give full faith and credit to the prior New York "judicial Proceedings."
We have thus reached another stage -- one cannot say it is the last -- in the Court's tortuous course of constitutional adjudication relating to dissolution of the marriage status. Whereas previously only the "matrimonial domicile" could grant an ex parte divorce and alimony, now any domiciliary State can grant an ex parte divorce, but no State, even if domiciliary, can grant alimony ex parte when it grants a divorce ex parte. Page 354 U. S. 421
In Williams v. North Carolina I, 317 U. S. 287, the scope of Art. IV, § 1, was found to require full faith and credit to be given to a divorce granted ex parte by any State where one spouse was domiciled. The limitation of ex parte divorces to the matrimonial domicile imposed by Haddock v. Haddock was rejected as being based on "fiction." Williams v. North Carolina II, 325 U. S. 226,, made it clear that full faith and credit was required to be given only if the granting State was actually a domiciliary State, that the finding on this issue could not be foreclosed by the decreeing State, and that it could be readjudicated later by another State. But this restriction of Williams II was considerably weakened Page 354 U. S. 422 when the Court held that a sister State, no matter how great its interest because of its own social policy, was precluded from relitigating the existence of the jurisdictional facts underlying a divorce when both parties had merely made an appearance in the original divorce proceeding. Sherrer v. Sherrer, 334 U. S. 343, and Coe v. Coe, 334 U. S. 378. This was so even if the collateral attack were made by a third party who had not appeared in the original proceeding and who had independent interests. Johnson v. Muelberger, 340 U. S. 581.
One might have expected that, since Thompson v. Thompson, supra, was based on Haddock v. Haddock, it would have suffered the same fate. But no. The law is not so logical. The Court shrinks from applying Williams I to Thompson. In fact, we are now told that the vice of Thompson v. Thompson is just the opposite of that of Haddock v. Haddock: Thompson paid too little respect to the rights of the absent spouse and too much to the rights of the other spouse and his domicile. And so, as compensation, the interests of the absent spouse, which the Court subordinated so far as the breaking up of the marital relation was concerned in Williams I, are now to be enlarged so far as alimony is concerned. The requirement Page 354 U. S. 423 of Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U. S. 714, that there must be personal jurisdiction in an action to recover a judgment for personal services rendered was before the Court in Haddock, in Thompson, and in Williams I. Although it was found in all three cases not to be applicable to the unique interests and factors pertaining to the severance of the marriage status and the incidental determination denying alimony, it is now treated as a controlling precedent.
This is an artful disguise for labeling the action with the question-begging phrase, "in personam." A dogmatic, unanalyzed disregard of the difficulties of a problem does not make the problem disappear. Strictly speaking, all rights eventually are "personal." For example, a successful suit in admiralty against a ship results, of course, not in loss to the ship, but to its owner. The crucial question is: what is the fair way to proceed against these Page 354 U. S. 424 interests? May a State deal with the dissolution of a marriage comprehensively, or must it chop up the normal incidents of the cause of action for divorce?
No explanation is vouchsafed why the dissolution of the marital relation is not so "personal" as to require personal jurisdiction over an absent spouse, while the denial of alimony incident thereto is. Calling alimony a "personal claim or obligation" solves nothing. I note this concern for "property rights," but I fail to see why the marital relation would not be worthy of equal protection, also as a "personal claim or obligation." It may not be translatable into dollars and cents, but that does not make it less valuable to the parties. It cannot be assumed, by judicial notice, as it were, that absent spouses value their alimony rights more highly than their marital rights. Factually, therefore, both situations involve the adjudication of valuable rights of an absent spouse, [Footnote 2/1] and I see no reason to split the cause of action and hold that a domiciliary State can ex parte terminate the marital relation, but cannot ex parte deny alimony. "Divisible divorce" is just name-calling. [Footnote 2/2] I would therefore hold that Page 354 U. S. 425 Nevada had jurisdiction to make the determination it made with respect to alimony, and that New York must give full faith and credit to the whole Nevada judgment, not just to part of it.
"that the right of a married woman domiciled in New York to support Page 354 U. S. 426 survives an ex parte divorce, whether obtained in New York or elsewhere. . . . The interest of New York in her domiciliaries seems . . . to be of sufficient weight to justify allowing her to apply her own policy on the question of what effect ex parte divorces will be given as against the surviving support rights of her own domiciliaries."
Of course, New York has substantial connection with a domiciliary who has been divorced ex parte in Nevada, but that provides no justification for allowing it to refuse Page 354 U. S. 427 to give full faith and credit to that part of the Nevada judgment denying alimony. A State desiring to deny full faith and credit to the judgment of another State almost always has such a connection. Whatever the unusual circumstances that may justify making an exception to the requirements of the Full Faith and Credit Clause, this case does not present them because, for the reasons I have already stated, no stronger state policy can be urged in this case than was overridden in Williams I. Blanket discrimination against ex parte alimony decrees of sister States therefore subordinates the requirements of the Full Faith and Credit Clause to the policy of New York.
We are also told that "the interest of the wife in not becoming single and penniless is greater than her interest in not becoming single." This is doubtless a correct statement of fact, and might furnish a basis for legislation Page 354 U. S. 428 of a kind not at issue in this case, since the New York law is based on its right to disregard all ex parte alimony decrees, and not on an interest it may have in the indigent condition of former wives. [Footnote 2/3]
I cannot agree with such a holding. In the first place, as I see this case, there is no necessity to pass on this question at all. Our problem should be, initially at least, not whether this decree, insofar as it affects property, is "void" for lack of due process, but whether it binds New York Page 354 U. S. 429 under the Full Faith and Credit Clause. In other words, we need not, in the first instance, decide what the Due Process Clause forbids Nevada to do, but merely what the Full Faith and Credit Clause compels New York to do. One of the wisest of our constitutional commentators has warned us to beware the "constricting necessitarianism" of deeming the two questions to be one and the same:
Nor does it help to label Mrs. Vanderbilt's claim to support a "property" right, and therefore an in Page 354 U. S. 430 personam, rather than an in rem, matter. If it is due process for Nevada to adjudicate the marriage status of a domiciliary without personal service over the absent spouse (as it clearly is, see Williams v. North Carolina I, 317 U. S. 287), I see no reason why Nevada cannot, at least for the purposes of her own law, also adjudicate the incidents of that status.
If Mrs. Vanderbilt was a New York domiciliary at the time of the divorce, the situation would seem to me to be as follows: New York's law and policy is that the right of a married woman domiciled in New York to support survives an ex parte divorce, whether obtained in New York or elsewhere. The only question under the Full Faith and Credit Clause is whether New York is compelled to disregard her own law and policy in favor of the law of Nevada on the question of the survival of support rights subsequent to an ex parte divorce. My answer to this question is "no." The interest of New York in her domiciliaries seems to me to be of sufficient weight to justify allowing her to apply her own policy on the question of what effect ex parte divorces will be given as against the surviving support rights of her own domiciliaries. In my view, it does not follow automatically that, merely because New York must recognize the validity of Nevada's ex parte divorce, she must also recognize the effect Nevada would give to that divorce in connection with the wife's rights to support. The two questions are Page 354 U. S. 431 governed by different considerations. I quote again from Professor Powell:
"* * * *" "[It is argued] that the state where the stay-behind spouse has long been domiciled has an interest in making a quondam husband continue a prior obligation to support her, and that this interest is stronger and more meritorious than any possible opposing interest to prevent it that can be accredited to the state which gave him a divorce after being blindly satisfied that he intended an indefinite stay there. This seems so sensible that is should be obvious to any one who had never become confused by studying law."
In effect, the situation before us seems to me to be analogous to dower. If New York law should provide that the dower rights of her domiciliaries survive ex parte Page 354 U. S. 432 divorces, I would suppose that New York could give effect to that policy in spite of an ex parte Nevada divorce which purported to cut off the right to dower. The problem in each case is to weigh the policy of giving an ex parte judgment uniform effect throughout the nation against the interest of a particular State in a particular local policy. Where status is concerned, this Court held that the interest in certainty as to whether one is married or single outweighs the interest of home States in the marital status of their domiciliaries, so that North Carolina was forced to swallow Nevada's views as to what is sufficient cause for divorce even though the North Carolina wife had not appeared in the Nevada proceeding. Williams I, supra. But I see no reason why we should extend that, for me, already somewhat unpalatable mediation to the limits of its logic in order to hold that Nevada's views as to support as well as divorce must be forced onto other States, and that Nevada can not only compel wives domiciled elsewhere to become single against their will, but to be pauperized against their will as well. Of course, the reason for the distinction is not that the wife's right to support is "worth" more than her interest in remaining a wife. But the interest of the wife in not becoming single and penniless is greater than her interest in not becoming single. In other words, merely because it is held that the wife must be deprived of one benefit ex parte in the interest of national uniformity does not compel us to hold that the other benefit must vanish with it where the interest in national uniformity is not as compelling. [Footnote 3/2] Page 354 U. S. 433
Quite a different case is presented, it seems to me, where a wife becomes a domiciliary of New York after the ex parte divorce and is then granted support. In Page 354 U. S. 434 such a case, New York could not pretend to be assuring the wife the mere survival of a preexisting right, because the wife could have had no pre-divorce rights in New York at all. New York would merely be granting the wife a marital right in the teeth of a valid Nevada adjudication that there is no marriage. And, of course, at the time of the divorce, New York would have had no interest in the situation of any kind. In such a case, therefore, it seems to me that the Full Faith and Credit Clause would require New York to respect the Nevada judgment as to support rights. Furthermore, even aside from the judgment, as a matter of choice of law, I should think New York would be forced to look to the law of a State which had a substantial contact with these parties at the time of the divorce in determining the effect to be given to the divorce decree. It seems to me unfortunate that this Court should permit spouses divorced by valid decrees to comb the country, after the divorce, in search of any State where the divorcing spouse has property and which has favorable support laws, in order there to obtain alimony. I would therefore by no means hold the Nevada adjudication "void," and therefore of no effect in any State. [Footnote 3/4]
Thus, decision here, as I see it, turns on the domicile of Mrs. Vanderbilt at the time of the divorce. On this question, I am left in some doubt. Section 1165-a of the New York Civil Practice Act makes one year's residence necessary to suits for support. This is amenable to the interpretation that New York would not recognize Mrs. Vanderbilt as domiciled in that State until the lapse of a year, that is, after the decree of divorce here involved. See de Meli v. de Meli, 120 N.Y. 485, 24 N.E. 996. On the other hand, the opinion below intimates that the one-year Page 354 U. S. 435 residency can be regarded as merely a procedural prerequisite to filing suit under § 1170-b, and does not affect Mrs. Vanderbilt's status as a domiciliary of New York ab initio. [Footnote 3/5] In view of this uncertainty in the state law, I would remand to the state court for reconsideration in light of the above-stated principles.