Lynde v. Lynde

The purpose of this action is to enforce a claim for alimony for which the plaintiff has obtained a judgment against the defendant in the court .of chancery of New Jersey. The alimony was not granted by the original decree of divorce, which was based on the ground of desertion, and was procured after service of process by publication upon the husband, who was not served personally within the state, and did not then appear. The wife, however, subsequently made an application to the chancellor to amend the decree by adding thereto a provision authorizing her to apply at the foot thereof, at any time thereafter, for reasonable alimony, and such other relief touching alimony as might be equitable and just. The husband) appeared generally by his solicitor, in opposition to this application, which was granted by the chancellor. Lynde v. Lynde, 54 N. J. Eq. 473 , 35 Atl. 641 . The defendant thereupon appealed from the order amending the decree, and it was unanimously affirmed by the court of errors and appeals of New Jersey, for the reasons given by the chancellor below. 55 N. J. Eq. 591 , 39 Atl. 1114 . The vice chancellor, upon due notice to the defendant’s solicitor, then made an order of reference to a special master in chancery to ascertain whether alimony should be allowed to the plaintiff, and, if so, how much. Notice of hearing before the master was given to the defendant’s solicitor, who did not attend the reference, however, and who shortly afterwards informed the chancellor that he was mr longer solicitor for the defendant. This gentleman did not appear in the subsequent proceeding in the cause, although notified of the same. Upon the master’s report, the chancellor, on December 28, 1897, made a final decree supplementary to the amended decree of divorce, awarding the wife $7,840 back alimony, and further alimony at the rate of $80 a week, authorizing the issue of execution therefor, declaring the sums awarded as alimony to be liens upon the defendant’s real estate, requiring him to give security for the payment of such sums, and providing for sequestration and a receivership in case

The defendant’s appeal raises two important questions: (1) Had the court of chancery in Hew Jersey jurisdiction to render the judgment for alimony against the defendant? (2) If so, has the supreme court of this state any authority to enforce the Hew York judgment based upon the Hew Jersey decree for alimony, except by execution as a simple money judgment? '

1. Had the court of chancery in Hew Jersey jurisdiction to render the judgment for alimony against the defendant? The decree of divorce, as it originally stood, having been granted against the nonresident defendant without personal service upon him' in Hew Jersey, or an appearance by him therein, would not be recognized in this state as a valid judgment. People v. Baker, 76 N. Y. 78 ; O’Dea v. O’Dea, 101 N. Y. 23 , 4 N. E. 110 . When the plaintiff sought to amend that decree, however, by adding a provision which would enable her to recover alimony, she obtained an order from the chancellor requiring the defendant to show cause why her petition to that end should not be granted. This order to show cause provided for the service of a certified copy thereof and of the petition upon the defendant, either within or without the state. It does not appear where the papers were actually served, but a memorandum by the chancellor in the record shows that, when this application to amend the decree subsequently came before him, Hr. J. Herbert Potts and Mr. C. H. Voorhis appeared for the defendant in opposition to the desired amendment. In this memorandum Chancellor McGill says:

“It is asserted, on behalf of the petitioner, that the decree in this case failed to "include any provision for alimony because of the neglect of the petitioner’s solicitor, who did not carry out the petitioner’s instructions in that behalf; and upon the other side it is alleged that the failure to-as7e for alimony when the decree was taken was the deliberate act of both the petitioner and her counsel, with intent to give up alimony in order to facilitate them in obtaining a decree of divorce

The language which I have italicized certainly indicates that the defendant appeared in the proceeding by counsel to oppose the application on the merits. In order to ascertain the exact state of facts, the chancellor directed the taking of affidavits, adding: “Both the petitioner and her former counsel should be examined and cross-examined.” Pursuant to this memorandum, testimony was taken stenographically before a master, whose record shows that “J. Herbert Potts, Esq., solicitor of defendant,” was present at the hearing, and that he cross-examined the petitioner and another witness who testified in her behalf. Subsequently Mr. Potts served upon Mr. James Westervelt, the petitioner’s solicitor, notices that testimony would be taken in behalf of the defendant before masters in chancery at Trenton and Jersey City, and the minutes of the master in each instance show that Mr. Potts attended the hearing as counsel for the defendant, and examined the witnesses. On the argument of the

But the appellant confronts us with the proposition that an appearance in ■ opposition to a motion to amend a decree of divorce could not galvanize into life a judgment which previously was void, and he cites Kamp v. Kamp, 59 N. Y. 212 . That case, however, differed radically from the case at bar. There was no attempt there to amend the judgment. The effort was to obtain an order for alimony long subsequent to the decree of divorce, notwithstanding that the decree as it stood had presumably decided any claim for alimony adversely to the plaintiff, and gave no leave to the plaintiff to renew her claim in the future. The court of appeals decided that alimony could not be granted under those circumstances, but there is nothing in the opinions denying the power of a court, upon notice to the party to be affected, to amend a judgment in order to correct a mistake which was made in rendering it. Such was the power exercised by the chancellor of New Jersey in Lynde v. Lynde, 54 N. J. Eq. 473 , 35 Atl. 641 . A mistake was made in omitting from the decree a reservation of the question of alimony for future determination. “I am satisfied,” says the chancellor, “that the omission of the decree to reserve the question as to alimony was not a deliberate act of the petitioner’s counsel based upon the exercise of his judgment, but was due to the inadvertence of that gentleman in drafting the decree;” and he declares the rule in New Jersey to be that the court will, upon petition, amend its enrolled decree, when the amendment is necessary to give full expression to its judgment, and is matter which

2. Having reached the conclusion that the court of chancery in New Jersey had jurisdiction to render the judgment for alimony against the defendant, we now come to the second branch of the case: Has the supreme court of this state any authority to enforce its own judgment, based upon the amended New Jersey decree, except by execution, as a simple money judgment? The special term has done very much more than this. Not only has it adjudged that the defendant pay to the plaintiff alimony, counsel fee, and costs in excess of $14,000, and $80 per week alimony in the future, but it has required the defendant to give $100,000 security for the payment of such alimony, has enjoined him from disposing of any of his property except the income thereof until he makes the prescribed payments or gives such security, and has named a receiver to whom he must transfer his real and personal estate, if he fails to pay the alimony or secure the payment thereof. The extent to which the courts of this state will go in enforcing a judgment based upon a foreign decree for alimony is more fully and satisfactorily considered and discussed in Wood v. Wood, 7 Misc. Rep. 579 , 28 N. Y. Supp. 154 , than in any other case which I have been able to find. It is a special-term decision in the New York court of common pleas, overruling a demurrer to a complaint. A determination of the point which arises

The proposition that the courts of this state have no jurisdiction over the subject of divorce, except such as they derive from statute, has quite recently been reasserted by the court of appeals. Walker v. Walker, 155 N. Y. 77 , 49 N. E. 663 . A successful suit in New York, however, upon a New Jersey decree of divorce and alimony, does not make the New Jersey decree, as such, a judgment of the courts of this state. That decree is merely evidence, upon which the plaintiff obtains here, not a judgment of divorce and alimony, but a judgment authorizing the collection of a certain sum. Hence our courts may not afford the remedies which the Code of Civil Procedure authorizes here upon a judgment for alimony, but may only enforce the judgment as one for money. There are numerous judicial opinions which declare, in substance, that a judgment sued upon in a sister state is entitled to the same effect there as it had in the state in which it was obtained. Probably no case has been more frequently cited in support of this rule than Barber v. Barber, 21 How. 582 , 595. It was there said by Mr. Justice Wayne that, when a court having jurisdiction of a suit for divorce makes an allowance to the wife by way of alimony, “it becomes a judicial debt of record against the husband, which may be enforced by execution or attachment against his person, issuing from the court which gave the decree; and when that cannot be done on account of the husband having left or fled from that jurisdiction to another, where the process of that court cannot reach him, the wife, by her next friend, may sue him wherever he may be found, or where he shall have acquired a new domicile, for the purpose of recovering the alimony due to her, or to carry the decree into a judgment there, with the same effect that it has in the state in which the decree was given.” Judge Pryor, in Wood v. Wood, supra, declined to follow this dictum in the prevailing opinion in the Barber Case, deeming the better argument to be that of the dissenting members of the court. But a careful examination of the facts, as stated by Mr. Justice Wayne himself (foot of page 587), shows that the case really involved no question as to the enforcement of the judgment by remedies exclusively appertaining to divorce jurisdiction. The decree granted upon the foreign judgment simply adjudged that a specific amount was due to the wife, that the husband should pay it, and, in default of such payment, execution should issue therefor. Though granted on the equity side of the court, it was to all intents and purposes simply a money judgment at law. It is probable, therefore, that the language of Mr. Justice Wayne in

“The authenticity of a judgment and its effect depend upon the law made in pursuance of the constitution. The faith and credit due to it as the judicial proceeding of a state is given by the constitution, independently of all legislation. By the law of the 26th of May, 1790, the judgment is made a debt of record, not examinable upon its merits; but it does not carry with it, into another state, the efficacy of a judgment upon property or persons, to be enforced by execution. To give it the force of a judgment in another state, it must be made a judgment there, and can only be executed in the latter as its laws may permit. It must be conceded that the judgment of a state court cannot be enforced out of the state by an execution issued within it. The concession admits the conclusion that, under the first section of the fourth article of the constitution, judgments out of the state in which they are rendered are only evidence in a sister state that the 'subject-matter of the suit has become a debt of record, which cannot be avoided but by the plea of nul tiel record.”

This statement of the law has been approved by the supreme court of the United States as lately as 1887, in the case of Wisconsin v. Insurance Co., 127 U. S. 265 , 8 Sup. Ct. 1370 . The true rule seems to be that while a valid judgment in one state is effective in any other state in which it is proven, as a determination of the legal status and rights of the parties to the litigation in respect to the matters litigated, it does not take with it into that other state the right to any remedies, save such as are there established for the enforcement of judgments based upon judgments obtained elsewhere. As Mr. Freeman well says:

“In some respects It is obvious that the judgment of a court of another state cannot have the same effect as a domestic judgment. "Writs of execution cannot issue thereon, because the domestic courts have no authority to issue such writs in aid of the jurisdiction of foreign tribunals, nor can the latter tribunals issue writs which may be enforced in other states.” 2 Ereem. Judgm. (4th Ed.) § 575.

In Wood v. Wood, supra, Judge Pryor referred to the case of Bullock v. Bullock, 27 Atl. 435 , 51 N. J. Eq. 444 , where the chancellor refused to enforce the specific performance of a direction in a New York decree of divorce that the defendant should secure the alimony by the execution of a mortgage on his real estate in New Jersey. This decision has since been affirmed on appeal, although only by a closely-divided court. 52 N. J. Eq. 561 , 30 Atl. 676 . In the opinion of Garrison, J., in favor of affirmance, the following passage clearly defines what I understand to be the judgment to which alone the federal law gives conclusive effect:

“That only is ‘judgment’ that is pronounced between the parties to the action, upon the matters submitted to the court for decision. To judgments thus rendered the federal law accords in every state the same conclusive force possessed in the state where they are rendered. After judgment in a state court, all that follows, for the purpose of enabling the successful party to reap the benefits of the determination in his favor, is execution or in aid of execution. No interpretation has ever been placed upon the federal constitution giving con-

elusive effect, or, indeed, any effect at all, to the executions of the judgments rendered in sister states, or to any order merely in aid thereof.”

In this view, proof here of the New Jersey judgment for alimony in the present case, while it established the plaintiff’s right to recover the amount of alimony thereby adjudged to be due, did not confer upon her any right to enforce payment of it in this state by means of the equitable remedies of sequestration, injunction, etc., which the New Jersey judgment provided for; nor could she here invoke the statutory provisions of our Code' in reference to the collection and enforcement of judgments awarding alimony, because, as has already been said, the jurisdiction of the New York courts to apply these Code remedies is limited to cases in which the judg: ment of divorce or separation is rendered here.

I do not mean to assert that cases might not arise in which equitable relief could be afforded to a plaintiff in an ancillary action, after an unsuccessful attempt to collect by execution a judgment based! on a foreign decree for alimony. Possibilities of this kind are suggested by Wetmore v. Wetmore, 149 N. Y. 520 , 44 N. E. 169 . No such question, however, is involved in the present case. The views which have been expressed simply negative the power of the supreme court here to enforce the special-term judgment based upon the plaintiff’s New Jersey decree, by sequestration proceedings and the other modes specially provided in the Code of Special Procedure for the collection of alimony.

The judgment appealed from should therefore be modified so as merely to. adjudge that the plaintiff recover of the defendant the amount of the past-due alimony, together with the counsel fee awarded to her by the New Jersey decree. There is nothing in the point that the New Jersey judgment is not enforceable at all here, because, as the appellant contends, “our law could not award alimony to a woman divorced in 1893 from a husband then without means, nor could it allow a mistake in a judgment to be corrected after the lapse of two years from the entry of the judgment.” The litigation concerning the question of alimony took place in New Jersey, and the procedure therein was subject to the regulations which prevail in that state. All concur.