“The question in this case is, therefore, not whether in-tervenor has acquired a Missouri residence, but whether after attaining his majority he has, through the exercise of a choice, changed his domicile by abandonment of the former and acquisition of a new one.... [A]person can have but one domicile, which, when once established, continues until he renounces it and takes up another in its stead. In order to effectuate a change it is necessary that there shall be actual personal presence in the new place and also the present intention to remain there, either permanently or for an indefinite time, without any fixed or certain purpose to return to the former place of abode.”
How later courts described this case
- “The question in this case is, therefore, not whether in-tervenor has acquired a Missouri residence, but whether after attaining his majority he has, through the exercise of a choice, changed his domicile by abandonment of the former and acquisition of a new one.... [A]person can have but one domicile, which, when once established, continues until he renounces it and takes up another in its stead. In order to effectuate a change it is necessary that there shall be actual personal presence in the new place and also the present intention to remain there, either permanently or for an indefinite time, without any fixed or certain purpose to return to the former place of abode.”
- defining the word "resident" as not requiring actual, physical presence
- construing residency requirement for governor in Article IV, Section 3
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
DONNELLY, Judge
(dissenting).
I have sworn, as a Judge of this Court, to support the Constitution of the State of Missouri (Art. VII, § 11).
The Constitution of the State of Missouri requires that the Governor shall have been “a resident of this state at least ten years next before election.” (Art. IV, § 3).
On or about January 10, 1964, Interve-nor represented to the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia, that he was then a resident of Fulton County, Georgia. On July 26, 1972, Intervenor represented to this Court that he was a resident of Missouri throughout the year 1964. I am unable to reconcile the two positions.
*649 Intervenor lived in Washington, D. C., and worked for a private law firm there from November, 1964, through October, 1967. He married his wife in Lexington, Kentucky, on May 13, 1967, and lived with her in Washington, D. C., from June through October, 1967.
Intervenor was born March 6, 1939, in St. Louis, Missouri, and spent his youth, through the first two years of high school, in Mexico, Missouri. He then attended Deerfield Academy, Deerfield, Massachusetts. He then attended Princeton University. He then attended the University of Virginia School of Law. He then served as a law clerk in Atlanta for a federal judge. After a brief period in Missouri, he served a law firm in Washington, D. C., for nearly three years. He then returned to Mexico, Missouri, to practice law “and enter politics” in late 1967.
Intervenor explains away all this by asserting that Missouri is “the place where he at all times intended to permanently reside.”
I must conclude, from all the evidence, that, except for brief intervals, Intervenor physically lived outside Missouri from the Fall of 1954 until the Fall of 1967. I do not believe this type of “sporadic residence” is what the people of Missouri had in mind when they adopted Art. IV, § 3, Constitution of Missouri.
I dissent.