UNITED STATES DIVORCES

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25784, 21 April 1949, Page 5

UNITED STATES DIVORCES

EFFECT OF SUPREME COURT RULING

LAWYERS REPORT MANY INQUIRIES (N.Z. Press —Copyright) (Rec. 9 pan.) WASHINGTON, April 19. Thousands of persons throughout the United States are to-day wondering whether or not they are married and, if so, to whom. The United States Supreme Court yesterday ruled that divorces could be declared invalid when a divorced partner was not personally served with notice of the divorce action.

Divorce lawyers to-day reported anxious inquiries from clients who envisaged the possibility of a man leaving “a wife who cannot be his widow, and a widow who was no longer his wife.” One of the Supreme Court Judges expressed the idea thus in dissenting from the Court’s majority decision upholding the verdict or the Connecticut State Court that a Nevada divorce was invalid because the man’ obtaining it was not a bona fide resident of Nevada.

It is common knowledge that parties seeking divorces have been similarly placed in many thousands of cases, not only in Reno, Nevada, the most notorious American divorce centre, but also in other States which have found it profitable to compete for the divorce business. States Make Own Laws Each State makes its own divorce laws. These range in stringency from a complete ban on divorces to provisions allowing a divorce on almost any pretext.

Although the States, under the Constitution, each agree to honour the judgments of the others, they have frequently refused to do so. The Federal Supreme Court, in its judgment yesterday, sustained the Connecticut Court’s decision that the divorced first wife of a man who had obtained his divorce in Nevada and who had died intestate after remarrying, was entitled to a widow’s share of the dead man’s Connecticut estate. The reason given by the Connecticut Court was that the Connecticut law stipulated more stringent residential qualifications than the Nevada law.

The Supreme Court further ruled that a divorce could be challenged if notice of the action was not served on the divorced partner within the divorce State, or if the partner was not represented in the divorce proceedings. Lawyers in Washington are unwilling to give any hurried opinion on the effect of the Court’s decision, but claim that the Court has said nothing new. It has been shown many times that divorces secured by easy ways are good so long as they are not challenged.