Court Opinion

ID: 9868558
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-26 18:41:12.358199+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:45:51.503835
License: Public Domain

On Petition to- Rehear.
Our conclusions stated in the opinion on the original hearing were expressly limited to actions for divorce between citizens of this State, by which we meant persons domiciled within the State. Whether the principle followed may be extended to a case in which only the *547defendant is domiciled in the State is unnecessary to determine herein. Certainly we have said nothing to indicate that the same principle would apply to a case in which neither of the parties was domiciled in the State. In such a case the courts of the State would not have jurisdiction of the marital status of the parties, which is the res or subject-matter of an action for divorce. People v. Dawell (Cooley, J.), 25 Mich., 247, 263, 12 Am. Rep., 260; Gettys v. Gettys, 71 Tenn., 260; Turpin v. Turpin (Tenn. Chy. App.), 58 S. W., 763.
The Circuit and Chancery Courts of the State are given general jurisdiction of actions for divorce by statute, and it is immaterial that this jurisdiction is statutory in its origin, rather than inherent. The jurisdiction of these courts in actions for divorce is not limited to the county or district in which the court is located, since, concededly, process in such an action may be executed in any part of the State, when the action is brought in the county where the parties resided at the time of their separation, and the defendant is found elsewhere in the State. The case of Person v. Person, 25 Tenn., 148, holding the contrary, was decided under the Act of 1835, as set out in the Code of 1858, Section 2451, which did not authorize the filing of a suit in the county in which the parties resided at the time of their separation, as now authorized under the Act of 1859-60, chapter 88.
It was not our purpose to overrule Walton v. Walton, 96 Tenn., 25, and the conclusion heretofore announced is not inconsistent with the opinion in that case. We have dealt herein only with the powers of the Chancery Court and its jurisdiction of subject-matter; not with its policy or the exercise of its discretion.
The defendant was before the court in Walton v. Walton, supra, by personal service of process, and the trial *548was upon pro confesso entered against tlie defendant. The public policy entering into each action for divorce justified the action of the court in dismissing the suit upon proof that the action should have been brought in another county, as required by the statute fixing the venue; but the effect of our holding herein is that the Circuit Court in the Walton case had jurisdiction of the subject-matter of the suit, and if a judgment had been rendered upon the merits, after the defendant had been personally served with process and had made no defense, such judgment would have been within the power of the circuit court and would-not have been subject to collateral attack thereafter.
The complainant complains further that the court did not consider or discuss in the opinion previously filed the contention that the appointment of a receiver was improper and illegal because made at the time the bill was presented to the Chancellor for fiats of injunction and attachment and before it had been filed in the office of the clerk.
This contention was overruled by the Chancellor and was not considered by the Court of Appeals. We had reference to it, among other contentions of the complainant, when we held that we were without jurisdiction to consider the other questions made by complainant in the Court of Appeals which were not made the basis of assignments of error in complainant’s petition for certiorari.
Other matters urged upon the court in the complainant’s petition to rehear have been considered and found to be without merit.
The petitioD to rehear will accordingly be denied: