Opinion ID: 1915590
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Text: The sole purpose of the instant bill, however, is not merely to vacate the 1948 decree. The instant bill does pray that the court will annul the divorce decree of 1948, but it also prays that the court will render a decree declaring that complainant's marriage to respondent is null and void. By whatever name the bill is called, it still seems to us that it is a bill to annul complainant's marriage to respondent. We cannot see where the Declaratory Judgment Act adds or takes away anything with respect to complainant's right to maintain such a bill. The only possible result in a suit on such a bill is a declaration that the parties are, or are not, husband and wife. The lower court has jurisdiction of the parties, complainant being a citizen of Alabama, and authority to annul the marriage, even though the ceremony was performed in another state. Hamlet v. Hamlet, 242 Ala. 70, 4 So.2d 901. If complainant is a bona fide resident citizen of Jefferson County, Alabama, as he alleges, then the Circuit Court of Jefferson County, in equity, has jurisdiction to declare his purported marriage void, if the marriage is void and complainant has not lost the right to maintain the instant bill; and this is so although the purported marriage was celebrated in New Jersey. This court has, however, refused to annul marriages where the basis of annulment was the claim that a decree divorcing one of the parties from a prior spouse was void, and the basis for holding the decree void was fraud as to residence of the parties perpetrated on the court which rendered the decree. In Mussey v. Mussey, 251 Ala. 439, 37 So.2d 921, this court held that the husband was estopped to deny the validity of a Nevada decree, where he was the principal movant in the Nevada proceedings wherein his wife was divorced from her first husband. The Mussey case cites Fairclough v. St. Amand, 217 Ala. 19, 114 So. 472, 474, where this court denied the right of the first husband to question the validity of a divorce granted to the wife in Alabama, in a suit brought at the instigation of the second husband and based on the fraudulent representation that the wife was domiciled in Alabama. The court said that the second husband,    Fairclough, and not St. Amand   , the first husband, was the real actor and party in interest, and was estopped to challenge the validity of the divorce decree. This court said:    Under the circumstances before us, a delay of more than a year after the decree, before challenging it is sufficient to present the bar of laches when St. Almond [sic] knew the facts of the decree, the status of the parties, and his renewed friendship or business relations with Fairclough, and the changed relations of Dorothy and the birth of the child. (Citations Omitted.) 217 Ala. at page 22, 114 So. at page 474. We note that circumstances, such as the birth of a child and participation in the fraud by the second husband, were present in Fairclough v. St. Amand, and that those circumstances are not present here. The delay of one year, however, is present. The instant complainant, John J. Aiello, in essence, is asking to be relieved of the injury inflicted on him by fraud of the respondent in representing to him that she was to marry him in 1950. The alleged fraud on the court in 1948 did not even remotely affect complainant prior to 1950. Upon timely application, where one is injured by fraud of another, when the facts are concealed or do not come to the knowledge of the injured person until some time afterwards, the statute of limitations, in a court of equity, will be held to run from the discovery of the fraud, or until, by reasonable diligence, the fraud would have been discovered, after which he must have one year within which to prosecute his suit. (Citations Omitted.) The limitation in actions seeking relief on the ground of fraud is one year within which to institute suit. Code 1907, § 4852; Code, 1923, § 8966;   . Meeks v. Miller, 214 Ala. 684, 687, 108 So. 864, 867; § 42, Title 7, Code 1940. In Dorsey v. Dorsey, 259 Ala. 220, 66 So.2d 135, this court held that a bill to annul a marriage, on the ground that the respondent had a living husband by a prior undissolved marriage, was timely filed withone year after the complainant discovered that respondent had not been divorced from her first husband. If the instant complainant can amend his bill to show that he has been diligent in bringing this suit within one year after his discovery of the alleged fraud and that he was reasonably diligent in making such discovery, then the bill will not be subject to the ground of demurrer charging him with delay. It appearing on the face of the bill that it was filed more than three years after the date of the decree sought to be vacated, it was incumbent upon the complainant to allege facts to excuse the long delay in filing the present bill.    Such a bill as this must allege with precision and accuracy not only when but how complainant came into a knowledge of the various facts alleged as constituting the right sought to be enforced. (Citations Omitted.) Urquhart v. McDonald, 252 Ala. 505, 506, 42 So.2d 9, 10. See also: Quick v. McDonald, 214 Ala. 587, 108 So. 529; Tarlton v. Tarlton, 262 Ala. 67, 77 So.2d 347.