Court Opinion

ID: 9599179
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:15:40.1733+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:59.898420
License: Public Domain

SCHAUER, J., Concurring.
I concur in the judgment and also in the majority opinion except insofar as some expressions in the latter (unnecessary to the conclusion) may be deemed to indicate a view inconsistent with that expressed by me in a concurring opinion in DeYoung v. DeYoung (1946), 27 Cal.2d 521, 527 [165 P.2d 457],
In the DeYoung case I said: “In a divorce action in a foreign state upon constructive service the court there has authority to adjudicate status (in rem) of a person residing in that state but has not jurisdiction to adjudicate away (in personam) any of the then vested property rights of the absent spouse who does not reside in such state, who is not personally served with process in that state and who does not appear in the action. The personal rights of the spouses in property not within the jurisdiction of the acting court remain subject to litigation in the proper forum. It seems to me that the right of a wife, or in a proper ease the husband, to support from the other spouse as of the date of the divorce is a property right which can be adjudicated only by a court having jurisdiction in personam.
“The above stated view does not necessarily conflict with the well established proposition that a court having jurisdiction over a domiciliary may adjudicate his marital status in rem and that (assuming due process) as an incident of the change of status any rights to future accruing support dependent icpon a continuing marital status no longer accrue because the status no longer exists.”
It is obvious from the quoted language that it has no application to a case such as the instant one in which it was the plaintiff herself who upon substituted service in Connecticut sought and procured the decree changing her status. She chose the forum and must be charged with knowledge of the limitations upon what relief she might get and also with knowledge of the character and extent of the rights which she would, or might, lose by bringing her action in that forum. In bringing that action she submitted herself to the jurisdiction of the Connecticut court for all purposes related to *545the litigation she instituted. Her in personam rights growing out of or dependent on the marital status are not in that case terminated by any act of the husband or without her having her day in court but, rather, are ended by her own act in bringing and prosecuting the suit to terminate the marriage, and procuring and accepting the judgment which does dissolve it.
If the plaintiff here had wished to bring in California a personal action against her husband in respect to property rights growing out of or dependent upon the marital status, including the right of support, she could have brought such an action during the marriage regardless of her lack of residence in California. The fact that California, like most other states, has enacted legislation requiring a specified minimum period of residence before an action for divorce, as distinguished from an action for support, may be maintained should not be regarded as an excuse for permitting a plaintiff voluntarily and unnecessarily to split a cause of action and try the sections piecemeal in as many states as fancy dictates. If there is to be a divorce at all it is the better public policy that the decree of divorce shall settle for all time all the rights and obligations of the parties to the dissolved marriage to the end that litigation arising from such marriage shall end and be known to have ended, and that the parties may have an opportunity to build to a future, free from, and perhaps the better for, the past, rather than to be wrecked by recurring litigation. Except, then, where there is a complete jurisdictional failure, as was the situation mentioned in the DeYoung case in respect to the personal property rights of the absent spouse, the courts and legislatures should look with disfavor on delayed litigation between former spouses seeking to assert rights growing out of the status which has long since been dissolved.