Court Opinion

ID: 9419971
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:52:21.108368+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:21.410405
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Rutledge,
concurring.
I join in the judgment dubitante, in the view that under Florida law res judicata has no application to an award of custody1 and the decree therefore is lacking in any quality of finality which would prevent the court rendering it, or another acquiring jurisdiction of the child’s status, from altering it.2
The result seems unfortunate in that, apparently, it may make possible a continuing round of litigation over custody, perhaps also of abduction, between alienated parents. That consequence hardly can be thought conducive to the child’s welfare. And, if possible, I would avoid such *620a distressing result, since I think that the controlling consideration should be the best interests of the child, not only for disposing of such cases as a matter of local policy, as it is in Florida and New York,3 but also for formulating federal policies of full faith and credit as well as of jurisdiction and due process in relation to such dispositions.
I am not sure but that the effect of the decision may be that the mother, once the child has been returned to Florida,4 will then be able to secure another decree there nullifying the father’s rights of visitation and custody given by the New York decree,5 or that in such an event he might lawfully repeat the abduction and secure restoration of those rights in New York. If so, the effect of the decision may be to set up an unseemly litigious competition between the states and their respective courts as well as between parents. Sometime, somehow, there should be an end to litigation in such matters.
But our function here is limited to application of the full faith and credit clause. I agree that technical notions *621of finality applied generally to other types of judgment for such purposes have no proper strict application to these decrees.6 But, even so, full faith and credit is concerned with finality and only with finality when the question arises in relation to the binding effects of judgments. And the law is clearly settled that while generally the clause requires other states to give judgments as much effect as they have where rendered, it does not require them to give more.7
Accordingly, if the state rendering the judgment gives it no final effect to prevent its alteration, I am unable to see how others having jurisdiction of the parties and the subject matter may be required to give it finality in this respect by virtue of the provision for full faith and credit.8 But this is what we would have to require, in view of the state of Florida law, in order to hold that New York could not make the changes which were incorporated in its judgment.
Whether Florida will be bound to observe those changes, in the event of another application by Mrs. Halvey, is a question upon which however I desire to reserve judgment, along with the other questions reserved in the Court’s opinion.

 In Minick v. Minick, 111 Fla. 469, 491, the Florida Supreme Court quoted with approval the statement in Schouler on Marriage and Divorce (6th ed.) § 1896: “These judgments [of custody] are necessarily provisional and temporary in character, and are ordinarily not res judicata, either in the same court or that of a foreign jurisdiction, except as to facts before the court at the time of the judgment.” See also Meadows v. Meadows, 78 Fla. 576.

 The trial court in New York gave lip service to observing the Florida award of custody to the mother, but awarded the father rights “of visitation” not allowed under the Florida decree; and these included not only visitation during specified hours while the child is to remain in the mother’s custody, but also the right to have the custody during more than three months of each year, during which time the mother was given specified visiting rights. The New York appellate courts affirmed the award as made by the trial court.

 See Fla. Stat. Ann. (1943) § 65.14; Jones v. Jones, 156 Fla. 524, 527; Green v. Green, 137 Fla. 359, 361.
See Matter of Rich v. Kaminsky, 254 App. Div. 6; Matter of Bull, 266 App. Div. 290, aff’d, 291 N. Y. 792; see also N. Y. Domestic Relations Law § 70; Finlay v. Finlay, 240 N. Y. 429, 433.

 The New York judgment permits the mother to take the child to Florida during the time she is to have custody, see note 2, but requires her to give a surety bond conditioned upon her surrendering the child to the father at the beginning of the periods prescribed for his having custody.
The mother therefore consistently with the New York decree may lawfully remove the child to Florida. Once he is physically and lawfully present there, it would seem that the courts of that state would be able to acquire jurisdiction over his status and to make further awards concerning it, unless indeed personal service of process upon the father is required for that purpose.

 See notes 2, 4. The question would remain whether the Florida courts by making a further decree could relieve the mother of the compulsion of the surety bond.

 See the opinion dissenting in part in Griffin v. Griffin, 327 U. S. 220, at 247; also the concurring opinion in Barber v. Barber, 323 U. S. 77, at 86.

 Rev. Stat. § 905, 28 U. S. C. § 687, and cases cited in Griffin v. Griffin, 327 U. S. 220, 236, note 1.

 Commentators who have suggested that full faith and credit be given to custody decrees have assumed that such awards could be modified only on the basis of new facts occurring subsequent to the original custody decree. See, e. g., Effect of Custody Decree in a State Other Than Where Rendered (1933) 81 U. Pa. L. Rev. 970, 972. As the opinion of the Court points out, the power of Florida to modify such a decree is not limited to change of circumstance. See also note 1.