Court Opinion

ID: 9545737
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:18:26.813008+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:15:26.659268
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent, believing plaintiff to have had no cause of action. Any alleged marriage-with one not divorced from her husband,, under Title 30-1-2, U.C.A.1953, is void,— not voidable, — not anything short of void. The woman here had absolutely no capacity to consummate a marriage here at the time it was undertaken. That should end the matter, and no extraterritorial statute or ministerial act, nunc pro tunc or otherwise, should be allowed to control the status of one applying for marriage here.
To determine other wise flouts the principle that the law of the forum controls matters of marriage status or the lack of it. To conclude otherwise allows a foreign state to determine the status of persons applying for marriage in Utah, strips our legislature of its absolute and inherent prerogative of determining who shall or shall not have capacity to marry here, and,, now, after this decision, makes for judicial legislation on our part. It permits an individual, at his pleasure, to determine his own status in Utah, by invoking an extraterritorial statute and ministerial act through the simple device of filing or failing to .file a paper elsewhere. I am aware of no instance where a state so benignly *236has ceded its coveted powers. One is left to wonder what this court would have done had our statute contained a bit of surplus-age saying that irrespective of the statutes of any other state, the marriage nonetheless would be void.
The main opinion cites no competent authority to sustain its assertion that “The validity of a second marriage in another state after a California nunc pro tunc final divorce decree under facts similar to this has been recognized a number of times.” Two of the three cases cited, purporting to sustain such statement, Bannister v. Bannister and In re Kelley’s Estate, do not support it at all. Both deal with cases of first and second marriages both occurring within the same “nunc pro tunc” state, not one in another state. The inaccuracy of the statement is apparent. It is conceded that in those cases the law of the forum would govern both marriages. But that does not mean that by self-serving legislation, a state can embark on an excursion into the legislative domain of another state and effectively tell the latter what persons can or cannot be capable of consummating a valid marriage there. The nunc pro tunc of California is the nullius juris of Utah insofar as it attempts to establish the qualifications and capacity for the marital status in the latter.
The only other case cited in the main opinion in support of its conclusion is that of Shippee v. Shippee. It is obvious that the Shippee case misapplied a different “nunc pro tunc” technique to an entirely different set of facts. Its conclusion that the California statute could validate an invalid New York marriage, obviously was arrived at on the authority of cases cited therein. With the exception of the California cases, which concededly must control there, not one of the cases cited can apply to the situation here. All of them say, and rightly, that a sister state must recognize judgments rendered in other states, though entered “nunc pro tunc.” They all presuppose and assume, and the facts with which they are concerned clearly show, that a judgment actually had been rendered, but that through error, properly had not been perfected. Such is not the case here. No judgment was rendered here until long after the second marriage, and the “nunc pro tunc” California judgment was not designed to perfect a judgment already rendered but for some reason, erroneously not perfected. Based on such misapplication of an entirely different rule, with the court’s indulgence in an unwarranted anachronism, the Shippee case is no authority for the decision here.
The conclusion here that allows an individual, at his pleasure, to declare his own status by filing or not filing a paper in another jurisdiction, cannot govern the state of Utah, and has ramifications that could result in a dangerous sapping of Utah’s legislative strength.
*237Although it does not seem pertinent here, I challenge the contention of the main opinion that Utah has emancipated women completely by statute and by decision. It has done neither. There is nothing in Secs, 30-2-1 to 10, U.C.A.1953 that suggests any such thing. If the legislature had intended complete, rather than partial emancipation, one section would have sufficed instead of ten. As to Taylor v. Patten, cited in support of the contention, it does not support it at all. One justice and a district court judge replacing a disqualified justice, thought the case should stand for that proposition, two justices thought it shouldn’t, by dissenting, and one justice thought it should only during' the interlocutory divorce period. That case can be cited only for the proposition that a wife might sue her husband for an assault only if the assault zvas committed during the interlocutory period — (and I think even that went too far.)
In passing, it is difficult to see the consistency of Chief Justice CROCKETT’s conclusion that one who alienates affections should not be allowed to advantage himself by a technicality, while the Chief justice condones and approves a recovery by one who, by judicial finding and decree, has been held guilty of extreme mental cruelty toward the very one whose affections allegedly were alienated, — as is re-fleeted in Mr. Chief Justice CROCKETT’s concurrence not only here, but in Sadleir v. Knapton. It seems that such conclusions result in the categorizing of wrongdoings into good or bad wrongdoings, and into compensable and noncompensable wrongdoings.
I think the case should be reversed with instructions to dismiss.
CALLISTER, Justice,, not participating.