Court Opinion

ID: 9572943
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:46:02.165909+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:34:46.135041
License: Public Domain

Rodman, J.
Dissenting: I dissent because I think the majority has placed too strict and technical an interpretation upon the language used by Judge Morris.
These facts are important in determining the scope and effect of his decree. (1) Defendant did not intend to deceive the courts of California. When she applied to the courts of that state for a divorce, she *382thought she had, prior to her marriage to plaintiff, been lawfully divorced from her first husband. She did not learn until July 1963 that her first marriage had not in fact been terminated. Defendant’s mother resides in California. Defendant intended to make that her home. It had become apparent that her marriage to plaintiff was a failure. (2) The order of May 1, 1963, directing the father to show cause why custody should not be awarded to the mother expressly “enjoined and restrained” the father from “taking or removing the children, Lorri Dianne Dees and Scott Alan Dees from the State of California and the custody of the plaintiff.” (Defendant here). (3) Plaintiff was aware of the provisions of the show cause order when he took the children from California. The court quotes the father as saying, “it was ‘necessary for him to steal the children in order to get them’.”
The judgment recites:
“[I]n view of the manner in which said children were returned to North Carolina, this Court notwithstanding, under ordinary circumstances it would not be ousted of jurisdiction, is in this particular case because of the peculiar circumstances involved, precluded from further investigating the matter as to custody and is called upon to give full faith and credit to the decree entered in the Superior Court of Orange County, California.”
The Court then adjudged:
“[T]hat insofar as the custody of the minor children of the plaintiff and defendant is concerned, the court orders that the decree heretofore entered in the Superior Court of Orange County, California, is res judicata and leaves this Court without jurisdiction to further determine the custody of said minor children.”
The words may not be technically correct; however, the order ought not to be held erroneous because Judge Morris said “without jurisdiction” when it is apparent he meant “the court refuses to exercise jurisdiction.”
The Court’s refusal to take jurisdiction was, obviously, based on plaintiff’s contumacious defiance of a valid order of a court of a sister state. When one has, as plaintiff expresses it, “to steal” in order to invest a court with jurisdiction I do not think it becoming or proper for that court to aid him in his nefarious work. It should require him to assert his rights before the California court which had previously taken jurisdiction.
The rule here advocated is not new. We at least implied recognition of the rule in In Re Orr, 254 N.C. 723, 119 S.E. 2d 880. There, as here, the father wilfully disobeyed an order of the court of general jurisdiction *383which enjoined him from removing the children from its- jurisdiction. There, as here, the mother found it necessary to make a new home in another state. Having wrongfully taken the children to Florida, the father not only challenged the rights of the courts of this State to award custody but inquired how the courts of this State expected to enforce any decree here entered. We answered in this language:
“If it be that respondent is beyond the jurisdiction and hence the power of this Court to enforce orders lawfully made, courts do exist where respondent resides with adequate power to compel respect and obedience to lawful orders of a court having jurisdiction of the parties and subject matter.”
The Civil Court of Appeals of Texas said in Autry v. Autry, 359 S.W. 2d 278:
“Barring exceptional circumstances creating an immediate emergency, we believe it is the duty of a court, on finding a child within its borders who is either domiciled in another state or has been wrongfully removed from such other state to escape jurisdiction in a pending proceeding, not to decide the question of proper custody on the merits, but to immediately grant or remand such child to the last lawful custodian without prejudice to the right of the other claimant or claimants to apply to the foreign court for a change of custody as the best interest of the child might appear to demand.”
State v. Black, 196 So. 713 (Ala.); Leathers v. Leathers, 328 P. 2d 853 (Cal.); Crocker v. Crocker, 219 P. 2d 311 (Colo.); Crabtree v. Superior Ct. In and For Stanislaus County, 17 Cal. Rptr. 763; Drake v. Drake, 1 S.E. 2d 573 (Ga.).
The troublesome problem illustrated by this case is considered in Interstate Recognition of Custody Decrees, 51 Mich. L. Rev. 345; and Custody and Maintenance Law across State Lines, 10 Law & Contem. Prob. 819. Dean Stansbury there said: “If there is a place anywhere in the laws for that much criticized word 'comity’ it is surely here.”
I give my approval to the observation made by the Supreme Court of New Mexico in Evens v. Keller, 6 P. 2d 200:
“Any other rule would be disastrous in the extreme, would reward contempt, and place a premium on abduction. The courts of any one of the forty-eight different states would, in the mind of a designing claimant to a child’s custody, offer hope that there could an adverse decision elsewhere be circumvented and a tortious custody of a minor made lawful. Fortunately the jurisprudence of our country has not so moulded the laws.”