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Showing contexts for: foreign decrees in Satya vs Teja Singh on 1 October, 1974Matching Fragments
The second paragraph contains the provision for the payment of maintenance to the minor children.
it is clear from the key recitals of the petition and the judgment that the Nevada Court derived jurisdiction to entertain and hear the divorce petition because it was alleged and held that the respondent was "a bona fide resident of and domiciled in the County of Washoe, State of Nevada, with the intent to make the State of Nevada his home for an indefinite period of time".
Since we are concerned with recognition of a divorce decree granted by an American court, a look at the American law in a similar jurisdiction would be useful. It will serve a two-fold purpose: a perception of principles on which foreign decrees of divorce are accorded recognition in America and a brief acquaintance with the divorce jurisdiction in Nevada.
Foreign, decrees of divorce including decrees of sister States save been, either accorded recognition or have been treated as invalid, depending on the circumstances of each particular case. But if a decree of divorce is to be accorded full faith and credit in the courts of another jurisdiction it is necessary that the court granting the decree has jurisdiction over the proceedings. A decree of divorce is thus treated as a conclusive adjudication of all matters in controversy except the jurisdictional facts on which it is founded. Domicil is such a jurisdictional fact. A. foreign divorce decree is therefore subject to collateral attack for lack of jurisdiction even where the decree contains the, findings or recitals of jurisdiction facts.(6) To confer jurisdiction on the ground of plaintiff's residence and entitle the decree to extraterritorial recognition, the residence must be actual and genuine, and accompained by an intent to make the State his home. A mere sojourn or temporary residence as distinguished from legal domicile is not sufficient.(7) In Untermann v.
The English law on the subject has grown out of a maze of domiciliary wilderness but English courts have, by and large, come to adopt the same criteria as the American courts for denying validity to foreign decrees of divorce. Recent legislative changes have weakened the authority of some of the archaic rules of English law like the one by which the wife's domicil follows that of the husband; a rule described by Lord Denning M. R. in Formosa v. Formosa(1) as "the last barbarous relic of a wife's servitude". The High Court has leaned on that rule heavily but in the view which we are disposed to take, the rule will have riot relevance. The wife's choice of a domicil may be fettered by the husband's domicil but that means by a real, not a feigned domicil.
Unhappily, the marriage between the appellant and respondent has to limp. They will be treated as divorced in Nevada but their bond of matrimony will remain unsnapped in India, the country of their domicil. This view, it is urged for the respondent, will lead to difficulties. It may. But "these rules of private international law are made for men and women-not the other way round-and a nice tidy logical perfection can never be acbieved".(2) Our legislature ought to find a solution to such schizoid situations as the British Parliament has, to a large extent, done by passing the "Recognition of Divorces and Legal Separations Act, 1971". Perhaps, the International Hague Convention of 1970 which contains a comprehensive scheme for relieving the confusion caused by differing. systems of conflict of laws may serve as a model. But any such law, shall have to provide for the non-recognition of foreign decrees procured by fraud bearing on jurisdictional facts as also for the nonrecognition of decrees, the recognition of which would be contrary to our public policy. Until then the courts shall have to exercise a residual discretion to avoid flagrant injustice for, no rule of private inter- national law could compel a wife to submit to a decree procured by the husband by trickery. Such decrees offend against our notions of. substantial _justice. In the result we allow the appeal with costs set aside the judgment of the High Court and restore that of the trial court.