Court Opinion

ID: 9580850
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:09:33.158984+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:33.973262
License: Public Domain

Felton, Chief Judge,
dissenting.
Mrs. Connell sued her ex-husband in South Carolina on a judgment for alimony and child *489support entered against the ex-husband in the Superior Court of Richmond County, Ga., seeking an increase in the amount of children’s support due to the improvement in the defendant’s financial condition. The defendant was served with petition and process in South Carolina. He filed a plea to the jurisdiction on two grounds. The first paragraph of this plea reads as follows: “Your respondent hereby makes a special appearance for the purpose of making an answer and return, objecting to the jurisdiction of this court in this matter, and without waiving the same.” (Emphasis supplied.) He also filed a plea to the merits by amendment. The trial court overruled the plea to the jurisdiction which the appellant appealed to the Supreme Court of South Carolina, which affirmed the trial court. The jurisdiction of the South Carolina court was attacked as to subject matter and person. As I interpret the decision of that court, it held that no valid pleas to the jurisdiction had been filed for the sole reason that the plea to the jurisdiction, a plea to the merits and of res judicata were filed and were of file all at the same time at the time judgment was rendered by the trial court, and that the only way a plea to the jurisdiction could be effective was that it be filed completely by itself and that if it was overruled the court under a numbered Code section could allow time for the filing of a plea on the merits. Connell v. Connell; 249 S. C. 162, supra. The law in this state at the time of the South Carolina decision was to the effect that “The filing of a plea to the merits when a plea to the jurisdiction had previously been filed does not waive the jurisdiction even though the plea to the merits is not expressly made subject to the plea to the jurisdiction.” Milam v. Terrell, 214 Ga. 199 (1) (104 SE2d 219). The same rule applies to present law under the Civil Practice Act (Ga. L. 1966, pp. 609, 622, as amended; Code Ann. § 81A-112).. While the fact that Georgia law is different from that of a sister State may not in all cases justify Georgia in refusing to give the sister State’s judgment full faith and credit, the facts in this case demand that Georgia refuse to give South Carolina’s judgment full faith and credit. The judgment in this case strikes at the heart of Georgia’s public policy; the rule it is based on is procedural and hypertechnical and patently unreasonable to the nth degree. It *490violates due process. I therefore think that since the South Carolina judgment should not have been given effect by the trial court in this case in the action based on the South Carolina judgment the trial court should have permitted the appellant to attack the South Carolina judgment collaterally in this judgment in the trial of the case appealed here. I also join in Judge Deen’s dissent.
In Brown v. Western Railway of Alabama, 338 U. S. 294 (70 SC 105, 94 LE 100), the Supreme Court held that a Georgia practice and pleading rule could not deprive a party of a federal right. If the Supreme Court may reverse this court because Georgia construes an action against a pleader, Georgia is not required to give full faith and credit to the judgment of a state which has a rule of pleading more ridiculous than our construction of a pleading against a pleader.
Debn, Judge, dissenting. The parties to this action obtained a decree of divorce including alimony and support payments in Richmond County, Ga., in 1963. Defendant remained domiciled in Richmond County. In 1966 plaintiff, who had moved to South Carolina, obtained service on her former husband when he came to that state to see the children and obtained from the South Carolina court a judgment purporting to change and modify the Georgia judgment by providing for an increase in payments of $150 per month, and awarding the wife’s attorneys an additional $2,500 as attorney fees for bringing the South Carolina modification action. The order, entered December 16, 1967, states: “It is further ordered that the original [Georgia] divorce decree of the parties hereto dated November 13, 1963, be and the same is hereby amended so that the respondent herein shall be directed to pay to the petitioner the sum of $150 per month for the support of each of the three minor children of the marriage.”
There is no dispute but that the defendant here has paid all sums awarded by the Georgia decree. The South Carolina order increased the monthly payments by $150, and plaintiff, without obtaining any further South Carolina judgment for arrearage, filed a “suit on a foreign judgment” in the City Court of Augusta, the same county in which the divorce decree was granted but *491a different court, seeking to recover $3,250, of which $2,500' was for attorney fees and $750 for arrearage in the increased amount set by South Carolina. The defendant’s defenses were stricken and a default judgment was entered against him for this amount.
I consider this action error for several reasons. First, as to the case being in default, no proof was offered as to any arrearage. The South Carolina judgment sued on was not a judgment for a sum certain but only for “$150 per month” for each of three children. The judgment was- thus not on a liquidated amount. Georgia law requires that a petition for modification of a Georgia alimony judgment be brought in the court which rendered the divorce. Code Ann. § 30-220. The plaintiff, by bringing the action in another state, not the state of residence of the defendant, and then seeking to enforce the new judgment in Georgia in the county in which the divorce was rendered but in a different court is thus allowed to circumvent Georgia law in Georgia to the detriment of a citizen of Georgia. Thirdly, the South Carolina order allows the plaintiff $2,500 in attorney fees which Georgia law specifically does not allow to be collected on a modification of a Georgia divorce decree where the petition is brought by the wife. Code Ann. § 30-223.
The majority opinion holds that regardless of these facts the South Carolina decree is entitled to full faith and credit. It grounds its reason, however, as shown by the cases cited, on the mistaken premise that the enforcement of a foreign divorce and alimony decree in Georgia and the enforcement of an alteration by a foreign state of a Georgia decree, where the alteration is one which Georgia does not permit, should be equated. I do not believe that a nonresident should be allowed, simply by suing in a foreign State, to obtain a judgment for sums not allowed in this State by the method of procuring a foreign court to modify a Georgia judgment, and then to return to Georgia and seek to enforce the (in Georgia) illegal amount in the very county in which plaintiff should have appeared in the first instance if she desired to have the decree modified.
“A rigid and literal enforcement of the [full faith and credit] clause, without regard to the statutes of the forum, would lead to the absurd result that wherever a conflict arises, the statute *492of each state must be enforced in the courts of another, but cannot be enforced in its own courts. . . Hence, the full faith and credit clause does not require the enforcement of every right conferred by a statute of another state, and, a fortiori, does not require the enforcement of a foreign statutory right where such enforcement would involve intrusion by the court of the forum into the public affairs of another state. . . Prima facie, every state is entitled to enforce in its own courts its own statutes, lawfully enacted, and one who challenges a state’s right to do so, because of the force given to a conflicting statute of another state by the full faith and credit clause, assumes the burden of showing, upon some rational basis, that of the conflicting interests involved those of the foreign state are superior to those of the forum.” 16 AmJur2d 997, Constitutional Law, § 590.
Furthermore, South Carolina, which has the same statutory requirement for modification of alimony decrees that we do (that is, that the petition for modification must be filed in the court in which the original judgment was rendered) has itself recognized that it would not be bound under like circumstances. Although in Grossman v. Grossman, 242 S. C. 298, supra, a proceeding partitioning alimony payments based on a foreign judgment between a spouse and children was allowed, the court observed at page 306: “Since the present decree is subject to modification in Ohio, it is generally held that we are not required under the full faith and credit clause of the Federal Constitution to enforce payment of arrears of support under such a decree. 17A AmJur., Divorce and Separation, Sections 974 and 975.” Cf. 24 AmJur2d 1117, § 979: “More specifically, if a decree for alimony or for the support of a child, or a unitary award for the support of a wife and child is subject to modification by the court in which it was entered, the traditional view is that it is not entitled to full faith and credit.” In this respect the courts of Georgia and South Carolina are in agreement. Under identical statutes not only has South Carolina held that full faith and credit would not be given to a modifiable decree, but Georgia also has twice held: “A decree for alimony of a sister State, providing for future monthly payments, which by its own terms is subject to be revoked of modified, as to the *493amount to be paid thereunder, by the court rendering such decree, is not such a decree as is enforceable in this State under the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution of the United States, or upon principles of comity.” Cureton v. Cureton, 132 Ga. 745 (2) (65 SE 65); Ferster v. Ferster, 219 Ga. 543 (134 SE2d 600).
I would reverse.
I am authorized to state that Chief Judge Felton concurs in this dissent.