Court Opinion

ID: 9669183
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:42:03.73679+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:53.305479
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
SIMPSON, justice.
■On. a recanvass of the authorities in the light of the brief and argument of counsel applying .for rehearing, we are still convinced of the soundness of our original conclusions. .Deferring, however, to counsel’s earnestness, we will extend the opinion to comment that Taylor v. Taylor, 219 Ala. 419, 31 So.2d 579, is no authority to contradict the holding that if the marriage between the parties be declared void (by invalidating the Georgia divorce decree) because appellant had a living, undivorced spouse, the issue of the marriage would be rendered illegitimate. The Taylor case was where, pursuant to § 4, Title 34, Code 1940, a young man under the age of seventeen years was permitted to interpose proceedings to invalidate hi's marriage, the court holding that the marriage was not void but merely voidable and that the rights of the parties and their child would be fixed as of the date of the rendition of the decree, having the effect of making the child legitimate. In the case at bar, however, we are dealing with an alleged void status. If the court should annul the prior divorce decree of Mrs. Davis and thereby adjudicate that when she married and when the instant proceedings were instituted she had a living, undivorced husband, then there was neither ceremonial nor common law marriage between her and appellee and the entire status would be void ab initio, rendering the issue thereof illegitimate. As was observed in Lewis v. Crowell, 210 Ala. 199, 97 So. 691, cited supra: “Jonas Crowell and Lucy Smith for many years prior-to her death ..lived together as husband and wife, "but during this time Jonas had a living -wife, from whom he had never been divorced,, and Lucy-had a living husband> from whom she-had "never obtained a divorce.- These two childixri were born while -Jonas and Lucy Were"living together;' and it appears, from the evidence that Jonas was recognized as their father. As one had a wife- and the other a husband living at that time, and no decree of divorce dissolving' the former marriage had ever been rendered by a court of competent jurisdiction, they could not be husband and wife under a common-law marriage. Baccus v. Eads, 209 Ala. 578, 96 So. 757; Potier v. Barclay, 15 Ala. 439. These children are bastards, illegitimate children * * *.” (Emphasis supplied.)
We will add that since original deliverance, the case of Johnson, Petitioner, v. Muelberger, 71 S.Ct. 474, was decided by - the Supreme Court of the United States,' and which we tihink would also sustain the! necessity of our giving credit to the Georgia divorce decree, regardless of our own *495liberal rule adverted to in the original opinion. Cf. 27 C.J.S. Divorce, § 336, p. 1304.
The application for rehearing is' due to be overruled. So ordered.
Application overruled.
All the Justices concur.