Court Opinion

ID: 9587907
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:27:51.024857+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:12:43.738292
License: Public Domain

Browning, Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent from the decision of the Court *403in this case and will briefly state my reasons therefor. The facts are fairly stated in the majority opinion. While the Court has attempted to distinguish this case from Henry v. Henry, 74 W. Va. 563, 82 S. E. 522, it is my opinion that the facts herein when applied to the Pennsylvania law provide that any order made “for the support of a wife, • child or parent, may be altered, repealed, suspended, increased, or amended, and the said court may, at any time, remit, correct or reduce the amount of arrearages, as the case may warrant.” Penn. Stat. Ann. Title 17, ch. 3, § 263 (1962). The Pennsylvania court has held that “orders in nonsupport cases have never been regarded as final. . . .” Commonwealth ex rel. Barnes v. Barnes, 140 Pa. Super. 397, 14 A.2d 164, and cases cited therein. In 50 C.J.S., Judgments, Section 889, at 478, it is clearly stated that: “A final judgment rendered by a court of a sister state is entitled to full faith and credit, and, in order to be entitled to recognition and enforcement under the full faith and credit clause of the federal Constitution, or as a matter of comity, the judgment must be a final judgment adjudicating the litigation in a conclusive and definitive manner.” The applicable law is as clearly stated in 24 Am. Jur. 2d, Divorce and Separation, Section 980, which states in part that: “[T]he full faith and credit clause does not require the enforcement of arrears of alimony or child support, where the court which rendered the judgment has a discretion to modify it retrospectively,” (Emphasis added). In the Henry case this Court said that if an order in the courts of New York “is subject to complete vacation or modification, so as to destroy the apparent right to the alimony already accrued under it, in whole or in part, no other court is bound to enforce it, or could do so consistently with sound legal principles.” That is exactly what the law of Pennsylvania is regardless of what the law in the State of New York may have been as was applied in the Henry case.
I would affirm the judgment of the Circuit Court of Marion County.