# Williams v. North Carolina

> Supreme Court of the United States · January 4, 1943 · 317 U.S. 287

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9419278

## Case

- **Full name:** WILLIAMS Et Al. v. NORTH CAROLINA
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** January 4, 1943
- **Citations:** 317 U.S. 287; 63 S. Ct. 207; 87 L. Ed. 279; 1942 U.S. LEXIS 2
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Murphy
- **Judges:** Douglas, Frankfurter, Murphy, Jackson
- **Cited by:** 852 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9419278

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- stating that because the Court “must assume that petitioners had a bona fide domicil in Nevada,” there was “no question on the present record whether a divorce decree granted by the courts of one state to a resident as distinguished from a domiciliary is entitled to full faith…
- finding that “[n]or is there any authority which lends support to the view that the full faith and credit clause compels the courts of one state to subordinate the local policy of that state, as respects its domiciliaries, to the statutes of any other state.”
- observing that “it seems clear that the provision of the Nevada statute that a plaintiff in this type of case must ‘reside’ in the State for the required period requires him to have a domicil as distinguished from a mere residence in the state”
- explaining that domicile is “essential in order to give the court jurisdiction which will entitle the divorce decree to extraterritorial effect”

## Opinion text

*308 Mr. Justice Murphy:
I dissent because the Court today introduces an undesirable rigidity in the application of the Full Faith and Credit Clause to a problem which is of acute interest to all the states of the Union and on which they hold varying and sharply divergent views, the problem of how they shall treat the marriage relation.
This case cannot be considered as one involving the Constitution alone; rather the case involves the interaction of public policy upon the Constitution. This is not to say that our function is to become censors of public morals and decide this case in accordance with what we may think is the wisest rule for society with respect to divorce. But the question of public policy enters to this degree — marriage and the family have generally been regarded as basic components of our national life, and the solution of the problems engendered by the marital relation, the formulation of standards of public morality in connection therewith, and the supervision of domestic (in the sense of family) affairs, have been left to the individual states.' Each state has the deepest concern for its citizens in those matters, and, concomitantly with that concern, it exercises the widest control over marriage, determining how it is to be solemnized, the attendant obligations, and how it may be dissolved. When a conflict arises between the divergent policies of two states in this area of legitimate governmental concern, as here, this Court should give appropriate consideration to the interests of each state.
In recognition of the paramount interest of the state of domicile over the marital status of its citizens, this Court has held that actual good faith domicile of at least one party is essential to confer authority and jurisdiction on the courts of a state to render a decree of divorce that will be entitled to extraterritorial effect under the *309 Full Faith and Credit Clause, Bell v. Bell, 181 U. S. 175 , even though both parties personally appear, Andrews v. Andrews, 188 U. S. 14 . When the doctrine of those cases is applied to the facts of this one, the question becomes a simple one: Did petitioners acquire a bona fide domicile in Nevada? I agree with my brother Jackson that the only proper answer on the record is, no. North Carolina is the state in which petitioners have their roots, the state to which they immediately returned after a brief absence just sufficient to achieve their purpose under Nevada’s requirements. It follows that the Nevada decrees are entitled to no extraterritorial effect when challenged in another state. Bell v. Bell, supra; Andrews v. Andrews, supra.
This is not to say that the Nevada decrees are without any legal effect in the State of Nevada. That question is not before us. It may be that for the purposes of that state the petitioners have been released from their marital vows, consistently with the procedural requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment, on the basis of compliance with its residential requirements and constructive service of process on the non-resident spouses. But conceding the validity in Nevada of its decrees dissolving the marriages, it does not mechanically follow that the Full Faith and Credit Clause compels North Carolina to accept them.
We have recognized an area of flexibility in the application of the Clause to preserve and protect state policies in matters of vital public concern. We have said that conflicts between such state policies should be resolved, “not by giving automatic effect to the full faith and credit clause, . . . but by appraising the governmental interests of each jurisdiction, and turning the scale of decision according to their weight.” Alaska Packers Assn. v. Comm’n, 294 U. S. 532, 547 . (See also Milwaukee County v. White Co., 296 U. S. 268, 273-274 , and compare the dissenting opinion in Yarborough v. Yarborough, 290 U. S. *310 202, 213-227 .) That Clause should no more be read “with literal exactness like a mathematical formula” than are other great and general clauses of the Constitution placing limitations upon the States to weld us into a Nation. Cf. Home Bldg. & L. Assn. v. Blaisdell, 290 U. S. 398, 428 . Rather it should be construed to harmonize its direction “with the necessary residuum of state power.” Id., at p. 435.
Prominent in the residuum of state power, as pointed out above, is the right of a state to deal with the marriage relations of its citizens and to pursue its chosen domestic policy of public morality in that connection. Both Nevada and North Carolina have rights in this regard which are entitled to recognition. The conflict between those rights here should not be resolved by extending into North Carolina the effects of Nevada’s action through a perfunctory application of the literal language of the Full Faith and Credit Clause, with the result that measures which North Carolina has adopted to safeguard the welfare of her citizens in this area of legitimate governmental concern are undermined. When the interests are considered, those of North Carolina are of sufficient validity that they should as clearly free her of the compulsions of the Full Faith and Credit Clause as did the interest of the state in the devolution of property within its boundaries in Fall v. Eastin, 215 U. S. 1 ; Olmsted v. Olmsted, 216 U. S. 386 , and Hood v. McGehee, 237 U. S. 611 , or the interests of a state in the application of its own workmen’s compensation statute in Alaska Packers Assn. v. Comm’n, supra, or its interest in declining to enforce the penal laws of another jurisdiction, cf. Huntington v. Attrill, 146 U. S. 657, 666 , all of which seem to be matters of far less concern to a state than the untrammeled enforcement within its borders of those standards of public morality with regard to the marriage relation which it considers to be in the best interests of its citizens.
*311 There is an element of tragic incongruity in the fact that an individual may be validly divorced in one state but not in another. But our dual system of government and the fact that we have no uniform laws on many subjects give rise to other incongruities as well — for example, the common law took the logical position that an individual could have but one domicile at a time, but this Court has nevertheless said that the Full Faith and Credit Clause does not prevent conflicting state decisions on the question of an individual’s domicile. Cf. Worcester County Co. v. Riley, 302 U. S. 292, 299 . In the absence of a uniform law on the subject of divorce, this Court is not so limited in its application of the Full Faith and Credit Clause that it must force Nevada’s policy upon North Carolina, any more than it must compel Nevada to accept North Carolina’s requirements. The fair result is to leave each free to regulate within its own area the rights of its own citizens.
Mr. Justice Jackson,
dissenting:
I cannot join in exerting the judicial power of the Federal Government to compel the State of North Carolina to subordinate its own law to the Nevada divorce decrees. The Court’s decision to do so reaches far beyond the immediate case. It subjects matrimonial laws of each state to important limitations and exceptions that it must recognize within its own borders and as to its own permanent population. It nullifies the power of each state to protect its own citizens against dissolution of their marriages by the courts of other states which have an easier system of divorce. It subjects every marriage to a new infirmity, in that one dissatisfied spouse may choose a state of easy divorce, in which neither party has ever lived, and there commence proceedings without personal service of process. The spouse remaining within the state of domicile need never know of the proceedings. Or, if they *312 come to one’s knowledge, the choice is between equally useless alternatives: one is to ignore the foreign proceedings, in which case the marriage is quite certain to be dissolved; the other is to follow the complaining spouse to the state of his choice and there defend under the laws which grant the dissolution on relatively trivial grounds. To declare that a state is powerless to protect either its own policy or the family rights of its people against such consequences has serious constitutional implications. It is not an exaggeration to say that this decision repeals the divorce laws of all the states and substitutes the law of Nevada as to all marriages one of the parties to which can afford a short trip there. The significance of this decision is best appraised by orienting its facts with reference to the States involved, for the court approves this concrete case as a pattern which anybody in any state may henceforth follow under the protection of the federal courts.
Erom the viewpoint of North Carolina, this is the situation: The Williamses, North Carolina people, were married in North Carolina, lived there twenty-five years, and have four children. The Hendrixes were also married in North Carolina and resided there some twenty years. In May of 1940, Mr. Williams and Mrs. Hendrix left their homes and respective spouses, departed the state, but after an absence of a few weeks reappeared and set up housekeeping as husband and wife. North Carolina then had on its hands three marriages among four people in the form of two broken families, and one going concern. What problems were thereby created as to property or support and maintenance, we do not know. North Carolina, for good or ill, has a strict policy as to divorce. The situation is contrary to its laws, and it has attempted to vindicate its own law by convicting the parties of bigamy.
The petitioners assert that North Carolina is made powerless in the matter, however, because of proceedings *313 carried on in Nevada during their brief absence from North Carolina. We turn to Nevada for that part of the episode.
Williams and Mrs. Hendrix appear in the State of Nevada on May 15,1940. For barely six weeks they made their residences at the Alamo Auto Court on the Las Vegas-Los Angeles Road. On June 26, 1940, both filed bills of complaint for divorce through the same lawyer, and alleging almost identical grounds. No personal service was made on the home-staying spouse in either case; and service was had only by publication and substituted service. Both obtained divorce decrees. The Nevada policy of divorce is reflected in Mrs. Hendrix’s case. Her grounds were “extreme mental cruelty.” She sustained them by testifying that her husband was “moody”; did not talk or speak to her “often”; when she spoke to him he answered most of the time by a nod or shake of the head and “there was nothing cheerful about him at all.” The latter of the two divorces was granted on October 4, 1940, and on that day in Nevada they had benefit of clergy and emerged as man and wife. Nevada having served its purpose in their affairs, they at once returned to North Carolina to live.
The question is whether this court will now prohibit North Carolina from enforcing its own policy within that State against these North Carolinians on the ground that the law of Nevada under which they lived a few weeks is in some way projected into North Carolina to give them immunity.
I.
Our Function in the Matter.
There is confided to the Court only the power to resolve constitutional questions raised by these divorce procedures, and not moral, religious, or social questions as to divorce itself. I do not know with any certainty whether *314 in the long run strict or easy divorce is best for society or whether either has much effect on moral conduct. It is enough for judicial purposes that to each state is reserved constitutional power to determine its own divorce policy. It follows that a federal court should uphold impartially the right of Nevada to adopt easy divorce laws and the right of North Carolina to enact severe ones. No difficulties arise so long as each state applies its laws to its own permanent inhabitants. The complications begin when one state opens its courts and extends the privileges of its laws to persons who never were domiciled there and attempts to visit disadvantages therefrom upon persons who have never lived there, have never submitted to the jurisdiction of its courts, and have never been lawfully summoned by personal service of process. This strikes at the orderly functioning of our federal constitutional system, and raises questions for us.
The prevailing opinion rests upon a line of cases of which Christmas v. Russell, 5 Wall. 290 , is typical. There it was said that “If a judgment is conclusive in the state where it was pronounced, it is equally conclusive everywhere.” Id. at 302 . This rule was uttered long ago in very different circumstances. The judgment there in question was on a promissory note, and the Court also said that: “Nothing can be plainer than the proposition is, that the judgment . . . was a valid judgment in the State where it was rendered. Jurisdiction of the case was undeniable, and the defendant being found in that jurisdiction, was duly served with process, and appeared and made full defense.” Id. at 301 . But the same defendant tried to relitigate his lost cause when it was sought to give that judgment effect in his home state. This Court properly held that it was not competent for the courts of any other state to reopen the merits of the cause. This very wise rule against collateral impeachment of an ordinary judgment based upon personal jurisdiction is now *315 made to support the theory that we must enforce these very different Nevada judgments without more than formal inquiry into the jurisdiction of the court that rendered them.-
The effect of the Court’s decision today — that we must give extraterritorial effect to any judgment that a state honors for its own purposes — is to deprive this Court of control over the operation of the full faith and credit and the due process clauses of the Federal Constitution in cases of contested jurisdiction and to vest it in the first state to pass on the facts necessary to jurisdiction. It is for this Court, I think, not for state courts, to implement these great but general clauses by defining those judgments which are to be forced upon other states.
Conflict between policies, laws, and judgments of constituent states of our federal system is an old, persistent, and increasingly complex problem. The right of each state to experiment with rules of its own choice for governing matrimonial and social life is greatly impaired if its own authority is overlapped and its own policy is overridden by judgments of other states forced on it by the power of this Federal Court. If we are to extend protection to the orderly exercise of the right of each state to make its own policy, we must find some way of confining each state’s authority to matters and persons that are by some standard its own.
The framers of the Constitution did not lay down rules to guide us in selecting which of two conflicting state judgments or public acts would receive federal aid in its extraterritorial enforcement. Nor was it necessary. There was, and is, an adequate body of law, if we do not reject it, by which to test jurisdiction or power to render the judgments in question so far as faith and credit by federal command is concerned. By the application of well established rules these judgments fail to merit enforcement for two reasons.
*316 II.
Lack of Due Process of Law.
Thirty-seven years ago this Court decided that a state court, even of the plaintiff's domicile, could not render a judgment of divorce that would be entitled to federal enforcement in other states against a nonresident who did not appear, and was not personally served with process. Haddock v. Haddock, 201 U. S. 562 (1905 Term). The opinion was much criticized, particularly in academic circles. 1 Until today, however, it has been regarded as law, to be accepted and applied, for good or ill, depending on one's view of the matter. The theoretical reasons for the change are not convincing.
The opinion concedes that Nevada’s judgment could not be forced upon North Carolina in absence of personal service if a divorce proceeding were an action in personam. In other words, settled family relationships may be destroyed by a procedure that we would not recognize if the suit were one to collect a grocery bill. 2
We have been told that this is because divorce is a proceeding in rem. The marriage relation is to be reified and treated as a res. Then it seems that this res follows a fugitive from matrimony into a state of easy divorce, although the other party to it remains at home where the res was contracted and where years of cohabitation would seem to give it local situs. Would it be less logical to hold that the continued presence of one party to a marriage *317 gives North Carolina power to protect the res, the marriage relation, than to hold that the transitory presence of one gives Nevada power to destroy it? Counsel at the bar met this dilemma by suggesting that the res exists in duplicate — one for each party to the marriage. But this seems fatal to the decree, for if that is true the dissolution of the res in transit would hardly operate to dissolve the res that stayed in North Carolina. Of course this discussion is only to reveal the artificial and fictional character of the whole doctrine of a res as applied to a divorce action.
I doubt that it promotes clarity of thinking to deal with marriage in terms of a res, like a piece of land or a chattel. It might be more helpful to think of marriage as just marriage — a relationship out of which spring duties to both spouse and society and from which are derived rights, — such as the right to society and services and to conjugal love and affection — rights which generally prove to be either priceless or worthless, but which none the less the law sometimes attempts to evaluate in terms of money when one is deprived of them by the negligence or design of a third party.
It does not seem consistent with our legal system that one who has these continuing rights should be deprived of them without a hearing. Neither does it seem that he or she should be summoned by mail, publication, or otherwise to a remote jurisdiction chosen by the other party and there be obliged to submit marital rights to adjudication under a state policy at odds with that of the state under which the marriage was contracted and the matrimonial domicile was established.
Marriage is often dealt with as a contract. Of course a personal judgment could not be rendered against an absent party on a cause of action arising out of an ordinary commercial contract, without personal service of process. I see no reason why the marriage contract, if such it be *318 considered, should be discriminated against, nor why a party to a marriage contract should be more vulnerable to a foreign judgment without process than a party to any other contract. I agree that the marriage contract is different, but I should think the difference would be in its favor.
The Court thinks the difference is the other way: we are told that divorce is not a “mere in personam action” since Haddock v. Haddock, supra, held that domicile is necessary to jurisdiction for divorce. But to hold that a state cannot have divorce jurisdiction unless it is the domicile is not to hold that it must have such jurisdiction if it is the domicile, as Haddock v. Haddock itself demonstrates. Further support for this view seems to be seen in Maynard v. Hill, 125 U. S. 190 , and in the Court’s subsequent approval of that case in Haddock v. Haddock, supra, at 569, 572, 574, 575, 579 . All that Maynard v. Hill decided was that the Territory of Washington had jurisdiction to cut off any interest of an absent spouse in land within its borders. But protection of land in the jurisdiction and protection against bigamy prosecutions out of the jurisdiction are plainly different matters. 3
Although the Court concedes that its present decision would be insupportable if divorce were a “mere in personam action,” it relies for support on opinions that the state where one is domiciled has the power to enter valid criminal, tax, and simple money judgments against — not for — him. 4 Those opinions are wholly inapposite unless *319 they mean that Nevada has jurisdiction to nullify contract rights of a person never in the state or to declare that he is not liable for the commission of crime, payment of taxes, or the breach of a contract, in another state; and I am sure that nobody has ever supposed they meant that.
To hold that the Nevada judgments were not binding in North Carolina because they were rendered without jurisdiction over the North Carolina spouses, it is not necessary to hold that they were without any conceivable validity. It may be, and probably is, true that Nevada has sufficient interest in the lives of those who sojourn there to free them and their spouses to take new spouses without incurring criminal penalties under Nevada law. I know of nothing in our Constitution that requires Nevada to adhere to traditional concepts of bigamous unions or the legitimacy of the fruit thereof. And the control of a state over property within its borders is so complete that I suppose that Nevada could effectively deal with it in the name of divorce as completely as in any other. 5 But it is quite a different thing to say that Nevada can dissolve the marriages of North Carolinians and dictate the incidence of the bigamy statutes of North Carolina by which North Carolina has sought to protect her own interests as well as theirs. In this case there is no conceivable basis of jurisdiction in the Nevada court over the absent spouses, 6 and, a fortiori, over North Carolina herself. I *320 cannot but think that in its preoccupation with the full faith and credit clause the Court has slighted the due process clause.
III.
Lack op Domicile.
We should, I think, require that divorce judgments asking our enforcement under the full faith and credit clause, unlike judgments arising out of commercial transactions and the like, must also be supported by good-faith domicile of one of the parties within the judgment state. 7 Such is certainly a reasonable requirement. A state can have no legitimate concern with the matrimonial status of two persons, neither of whom lives within its territory.
The Court would seem, indeed, to pay lip service to this principle. I understand the holding to be that it is domicile in Nevada that gave power to proceed without personal service of process. That being the course of reasoning, I do not see how we avoid the issue concerning the existence of the domicile which the facts on the face of this record put to us. Certainly we cannot, as the Court would, by-pass the matter by saying that “we must treat the present case for the purpose of the limited issue before us precisely the same as if petitioners had resided in Ne *321 vada for a term of years and had long ago acquired a permanent abode there.” I think we should treat it as if they had done just what they have done.
The only suggestion of a domicile within Nevada was a stay of about six weeks at the Alamo Auto Court, an address hardly suggestive of permanence. Mrs. Hendrix testified in her case (the evidence in Williams’ case is not before us) that her residence in Nevada was “indefinite permanent” in character. The Nevada court made no finding that the parties had a “domicile” there. It only found a residence — sometimes, but not necessarily, an equivalent. 8 It is this Court that accepts these facts as enough to establish domicile.
While a state can no doubt set up its own standards of domicile as to its internal concerns, I do not think it can require us to accept and in the name of the Constitution impose them on other states. If Nevada may prescribe six weeks of indefinite-permanent abode in a motor court as constituting domicile, she may as readily prescribe six days. Indeed, if the Court’s opinion is carried to its logical conclusion, a state could grant a constructive domicile for divorce purposes upon the filing of some sort of declaration of intention. Then it would follow that we would be required to accept it as sufficient and to force all states to recognize mail-order divorces as well as tourist divorces. Indeed, the difference is in the bother and expense — not in the principle of the thing.
The concept of domicile as a controlling factor in choice of law to govern many relations of the individual was well known to the framers of the Constitution. It was hardly contemplated that a person should be subject at once to two conflicting state policies, such as those of Nevada and North Carolina. It was undoubtedly expected that the Court would in many cases of conflict use one’s domicile *322 as an appropriate guide in selecting the law to govern his controversies.
Domicile means a relationship between a person and a locality. It is the place, and the one place, where he has his roots and his real, permanent home. The Fourteenth Amendment, in providing that one by residence in a state becomes a citizen thereof, probably used “residence” as synonymous with domicile. Thus domicile fixes the place where one belongs in our federal system. In some instances the existence of this relationship between the state and an individual may be a federal question, although this Court has been reluctant to accept that view. 9
If in testing this judgment to determine whether it qualifies for federal enforcement we should apply the doctrine of domicile to interpretation of the full faith and credit clause, Nevada would be held to a duty to respect the statutes of North Carolina and not to interfere with their application to those whose individual as well as matrimonial domicile is within that State unless and until that domicile has been terminated. And North Carolina would not be required to yield its policy as to persons resident there except upon a showing that Nevada had acquired a domiciliary right to redefine the matrimonial status.
However, the trend of recent decision has been to break down the rigid concept of domicile as a test of the right of a state to deal with important relations of life. This trend *323 has been particularly apparent in cases where the Court has authorized, if not indeed encouraged, the several states to set up their own standards of domicile and to make conflicting findings of domicile for the purpose of taxing the right of succession. Worcester County Trust Co. v. Riley, 302 U. S. 292 . The Court has completely repudiated domicile as the measure of a state’s right to tax intangible property. State Tax Commission v. Aldrich, 316 U. S. 174, 185 . The present decision extends the trend to the field of matrimonial legislation. This direction is contrary to what I believe to be the purpose of our Constitution to prevent overlapping and conflict of authority between the states.
In the application of the full faith and credit clause to the variety of circumstances that arise when families break up and separate domiciles are established, there are, I grant, many areas of great difficulty. But I cannot believe that we are justified in making a demoralizing decision in order to avoid making difficult ones.
IV.
Practical Considerations.
The Court says that its judgment is “part of the price of our federal system.” It is a price that we did not have to pay yesterday and that we will have to pay tomorrow, only because this Court has willed it to be so today. This Court may follow precedents, irrespective of their merits, as a matter of obedience to the rule of stare decisis. Consistency and stability may be so served. They are ends desirable in themselves, for only thereby can the law be predictable to those who must shape their conduct by it and to lower courts which must apply it. But we can break with established law, overrule precedents, and start a new cluster of leading cases to define what we mean, only as a matter of deliberate policy. We therefore search a *324 judicial pronouncement that ushers in a new order of matrimonial confusion and irresponsibility for some hint of the countervailing public good that is believed to be served by the change. Little justification is offered. And it is difficult to believe that what is offered is intended seriously.
The Court advances two “intensely practical considerations” in support of its present decision. One is the “complicated and serious condition” if “one is lawfully divorced and remarried in Nevada and still married to the first spouse in North Carolina.” This of course begs the question, for the divorces were completely ineffectual for any purpose relevant to this case. I agree that it is serious if a Nevada court without jurisdiction for divorce purports to say that the sojourn of two spouses gives four spouses rights to acquire four more, but I think it far more serious to force North Carolina to acquiesce in any such proposition. The other consideration advanced is that if the Court doesn’t enforce divorces such as these it will, as it puts it, “bastardize” children of the divorcees. When thirty-seven years ago Mr. Justice Holmes perpetrated this quip, it had point, for the Court was then holding divorces invalid which many, due to the confused state of the law, had thought to be good. It is difficult to find that it has point now that the shoe is on the other foot. In any event, I had supposed that our judicial responsibility is for the regularity of the law, not for the regularity of pedigrees.
It was twenty years before Professor Beale could justify the decision to his satisfaction. Compare Haddock Revisited, 39 Harvard Law Review 417, with Beale, Constitutional Protection of Decrees for Divorce, 19 Harvard Law Review 586. Others seem to lack his capacity for quick adjustment.
Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U. S. 714 ; Riverside & Dan River Cotton Mills v. Meneffee, 237 U. S. 189 ; cf. McDonald v. Mabee, 243 U. S. 90 ; Flexner v. Farson, 248 U. S. 289 ; Doherty & Co. v. Goodman, 294 U. S. 623 ; Milliken v. Meyer, 311 U. S. 457 .
Cf. Arndt v. Griggs, 134 U. S. 316 ; Dewey v. Des Moines, 173 U. S. 193 ; Fall v. Eastin, 215 U. S. 1 ; Olmsted v. Olmsted, 216 U. S. 386 ; Hood v. McGehee, 237 U. S. 611 ; Grannis v. Ordean, 234 U. S. 385 ; Clark v. Williard, 294 U. S. 211 ; Pink v. A. A. A. Highway Express Co., 314 U. S. 201 .
Lawrence v. State Tax Commission, 286 U. S. 276, 279 ; New York ex rel. Cohn v. Graves, 300 U. S. 308, 313 ; Milliken v. Meyer, 311 U. S. 457, 463-464 ; Skiriotes v. Florida, 313 U. S. 69 .
Cf. Arndt v. Griggs; Dewey v. Des Moines; Grannis v. Ordean; Clark v. Williard, supra, note 3 .
A spouse who appears and contests the jurisdiction of the court of another state to grant a divorce may not collaterally attack its findings of domicile- and jurisdiction made after such appearance. Davis v. Davis, 305 U. S. 32 . So also, a deserter from the matrimonial domicile may be bound by a divorce granted by a court of the state where the matrimonial domicile is situated. Whether fault on the part of the deserter is an essential seems on the basis of our cases on -jurisdiction *320 for divorce to be an open question; Atherton v. Atherton, 181 U. S. 155 ; Haddock v. Haddock, supra, at 570, 572, 583 ; and Thompson v. Thompson, 226 U. S. 551 ; but our decisions on analogous problems might be found to afford adequate support for a decision that it is not. Cf. Washington ex rel. Bond & Goodwin & Tucker v. Superior Court, 289 U. S. 361 ; Doherty & Co. v. Goodman, 294 U. S. 623 . See, further, Eestatement, Conflict of Laws, §§ 112, 113.
This was the decision in Bell v. Bell, 181 U. S. 175 ; and Andrews v. Andrews, 188 U. S. 14 . Davis v. Davis, supra, note 6 , in no way indicates that a finding of domicile after appearance of the absent spouse and litigation of the question would be conclusive upon the state of his domicile in litigation involving its interests and not merely those of the parties. Cf. Stoll v. Gottlieb, 305 U. S. 165, 172, n. 13 .
1 Beale, Conflict of Laws (1935) § 10.3.
Compare Texas v. Florida, 306 U. S. 398 , with Massachusetts v. Missouri, 308 U. S. 1 . And see Tweed and Sargent, Death and Taxation are Certain — But What of Domicile?, 53 Harvard Law Review 68, 76; ‘‘Texas v. Florida does not help the situation in the ordinary-case because at the rates of tax prevailing in most of the states a controversy between the states of which the Supreme Court has jurisdiction can arise only if at least four states claim a tax and the estate consists of intangible property having a value of at least $30,000,000. On no other state of facts will the assets be insufficient to meet the plaims of all of the claimant states.”

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9419278. Public record. Not legal advice.