Court Opinion

ID: 9419643
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:50:44.487093+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:19.729658
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Murphy,
concurring.
While I join in the opinion of the Court, certain considerations compel me to state more fully my views on the important issues presented by this case.
The State of Nevada has unquestioned authority, consistent with procedural due process, to grant divorces on whatever basis it sees fit to all who meet its statutory requirements. It is entitled, moreover, to give to its divorce decrees absolute and binding finality within the confines of its borders.
But if Nevada’s divorce decrees are to be accorded full faith and credit in the courts of her sister states it is essential that Nevada have proper jurisdiction over the divorce proceedings. This means that at least one of the parties to each ex parte proceeding must have a bona fide domicil within Nevada for whatever length of time Nevada may prescribe.
*240This elementary principle has been reiterated by this Court many times. In Bell v. Bell, 181 U. S. 175, this Court held that “because neither party had a domicil in Pennsylvania” the Pennsylvania court had no jurisdiction to grant a divorce and its decree “was entitled to no faith and credit in New York or in any other state.” The same rule was applied in the companion case of Streitwolf v. Streitwolf, 181 U. S. 179. Referring to these two prior cases as holding that “domicil was in any event the inherent element upon which the jurisdiction must rest,” the Court in Andrews v. Andrews, 188 U. S. 14, repeated that bona fide domicil in a state is “essential to give jurisdiction to the courts of such state to render a decree of divorce which would have extra-territorial effect.” The Andrews case made it clear, moreover, that this requirement of domicil is not merely a matter of state law. It was stated specifically that “without reference to the statute of South Dakota and in any event” domicil in South Dakota was necessary. 188 U. S. at 41. All of the opinions in Haddock v. Haddock, 201 U. S. 562, recognized this principle, with Mr. Justice Brown’s dissenting opinion stating that “the courts of one state may not grant a divorce against an absent defendant to any person who has not acquired a bona fide domicil in that state.” Finally, in Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U. S. 287, the Court acknowledged that the plaintiff’s domicil in a state “is recognized in the Haddock case and elsewhere (Beale, Conflict of Laws, § 110.1) as essential in order to give the court jurisdiction which will entitle the divorce decree to extraterritorial effect, at least when the defendant has neither been personally served nor entered an appearance.” See also Atherton v. Atherton, 181 U. S. 155.
The jury has here found that the petitioner’s alleged domicil in Nevada was not a bona fide one, which in common and legal parlance means that it was acquired fraud*241ulently, deceitfully or in bad faith. This means, in other words, that the jury found that the petitioners’ residence in Nevada for six weeks was not accompanied by a bona fide intention to make Nevada their home and to remain there permanently or at least for an indefinite time, as required even by Nevada law. Lamb v. Lamb, 57 Nev. 421, 430, 65 P. 2d 872. This conclusion is supported by overwhelming evidence satisfying whatever standard of proof may be propounded. Under these circumstances there is no reason to doubt the efficacy of jury trials in relation to the question of domicil or to speculate as to whether another jury might have reached a different verdict on the same set of facts.
Thus the court below properly concluded that Nevada was without jurisdiction so as to give extraterritorial validity to the divorce decrees and that North Carolina was not compelled by the Constitution to give full faith and credit to the Nevada decrees. North Carolina was free to consider the original marriages still in effect, the Nevada divorces to be invalid, and the Nevada marriage to be bigamous, thus giving the Nevada marriage the same force and effect that Nevada presumably would have given it had Nevada considered the original marriages still outstanding. Cf. State v. Zichfeld, 23 Nev. 304, 46 P. 802.
By being domiciled and living in North Carolina, petitioners secured all the benefits and advantages of its government and participated in its social and economic life. As long as petitioners and their respective spouses lived there and retained that domicil, North Carolina had the exclusive right to regulate the dissolution of their marriage relationships. However harsh and unjust North Carolina’s divorce laws may be thought to be, petitioners were bound to obey them while retaining residential and domiciliary ties in that state.
*242No justifiable purpose is served by imparting constitutional sanctity to the efforts of petitioners to establish a false and fictitious domicil in Nevada. Such a result would only tend to promote wholesale disregard of North Carolina’s divorce laws by its citizens, thus putting an end to “the existence of all efficacious power on the subject of divorce.” Andrews v. Andrews, supra, 32. Certainly no policy of Nevada dictates lending the full faith and credit clause to protect actions grounded in deceit. Nevada has a recognizable interest in granting only two types of ex parte divorces: (a) those effective solely within the borders of Nevada, and (b) those effective everywhere on the ground that at least one of the parties had a bona fide domicil in the state at the time the decree was granted. Neither type of divorce is involved here. And Nevada has no interest that we can respect in issuing divorce decrees with extraterritorial effect to those who are domiciled elsewhere and who secure sham domicils in Nevada solely for divorce purposes.
There are no startling or dangerous implications in the judgment reached by the Court in this case. All of the uncontested divorces that have ever been granted in the forty-eight states are as secure today as they were yesterday or as they were before our previous decision in this case. Those based upon fraudulent domicils are now and always have been subject to later reexamination with possible serious consequences.
Whatever embarrassment or inconvenience resulting to those who have made property settlements, contracted new marriages or otherwise acted in reliance upon divorce decrees obtained under conditions found to exist in this case is not insurmountable. The states have adequate power, if they desire to exercise it, to enact legislation providing for means of validating any such property settlements or marriages or of relieving persons from other unfortunate consequences.
*243Nor are any issues of civil liberties at stake here. It is unfortunate that the petitioners must be imprisoned for acts which they probably committed in reliance upon advice of counsel and without intent to violate the North Carolina statute. But there are many instances of punishment for acts whose criminality was unsuspected at the time of their occurrence. Indeed, for nearly three-quarters of a century or more individuals have been punished under bigamy statutes for doing exactly what petitioners have done. People v. Dawell, 25 Mich. 247; State v. Armington, 25 Minn. 29, 56 S. E. 673; People v. Baker, 76 N. Y. 78; State v. Westmoreland, 76 S. C. 145. Petitioners especially must be deemed to have been aware of the possible criminal consequences of their actions in view of the previously settled North Carolina law on the matter. State v. Herron, 175 N. C. 754, 94 S. E. 698. This case, then, adds no new uncertainty and comes as no surprise for those who act fraudulently in establishing a domicil and who disregard the laws of their true domiciliary states.
As Mr. Justice Holmes said in his dissenting opinion in the Haddock case, 201 U. S. at 628, “I do not suppose that civilization will come to an end whichever way this case is decided.” Difficult problems inevitably arise from the fact that people move about freely among the forty-eight states, each of which has its own policies and laws. Until the federal government is empowered by the Constitution to deal uniformly with the divorce problem or until uniform state laws are adopted, it is essential that definite lines of demarcation be made as regards the scope and extent of the varying state practices. See 91 Cong. Rec. 4238-4241 (May 3, 1945). This case illustrates the drawing of one such line, a line that has been drawn many times before without too unfortunate dislocations resulting among those citizens of a divorced status. There is no reason to believe that any different or more *244serious,-consequences will result from retracing that line today.
The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Jackson join in these views.