183 Pa. 625 | Pa. | 1898
Opinion by
The question at issue in this case arises upon the application of a woman, claiming to have been the lawful wife of the decedent at the time of his death, to have letters of administration upon.his estate granted to her. The letters were refused by the register and orphans’ court on the ground that the petitioner was not the lawful wife of the decedent and hence was not entitled to them. Briefly the facts were that the decedent Richard H. Stull was married to Hannah M. Lewis who still survives. In February, 1894, the wife obtained a decree of absolute divorce from him on the ground that he had committed adultery with one Ada Widdup. On April 5, 1894, the decedent and the said Ada Widdup, both being citizens and inhabitants of Pennsylvania, went to Cumberland in the state of Maryland, and were there united in marriage. They at once returned to Pennsylvania and there lived and cohabited as man and wife on the farm of the decedent in Washington county, until bis death, on June 11, 1895. They had no children, but there was one child, a son, Samuel A. Stull, by the first marriage. It was' admitted and found in the court below, and is now conceded on the argument in this Court, that the decedent and Ada Widdup,' his paramour, with whom he had committed adultery, went into Maryland to be there married, for the express purpose of evading the law of Pennsylvania which prohibits a marriage with the paramour during the life of the injured wife or husband. It is also conceded that by the law of Maryland there is no such' prohibition,:and that under that law the marriage was lawful.
By the ninth section it will be perceived there is an absolute prohibition of any subsequent marriage between the guilty person and the paramour during the life of the former wife or husband. It forbids the marriage relation to be contracted in the most general terms. The guilty party “ shall not marry the person with whom the said crime was committed.” A personal incapacity to marry is imposed. The necessary meaning of this language is that they shall not marry at all, in any circumstances, or at any time, or any place, so long as the injured party is living. So far as the purpose and meaning of this statute are concerned it is of no consequence where such subsequent prohibited marriage takes place. The relation itself is absolutely prohibited, and hence is within the operative words of the statute, without any reference as to where the marriage occurs.
It is now necessary to notice the other environments which affect the case. Both the parties to the prohibited marriage were citizens of Pennsylvania, domiciled on her territory, both before and after the marriage, and were only absent long enough to have the ceremony performed. They continued to reside together in Pennsylvania until the death of the husband. The woman resides here still. She never acquired any rights as an inhabitant of the state of Maryland, and can, and does, not now claim any right of that character. She is now claiming, not only the protection of our law, but a special.privilege and right, accorded only to lawful wives under the intestate law of Pennsylvania, to wit: the right to have administration o.f the estate
There is no question as to the general rule that a marriage which is valid by the law of the place where it is solemnized is valid everywhere. Of course, even this general rule has its exceptions where the particular marriage is contrary to good morals, or public policy, or to the positive statutes of the country where it is sought to be enforced. But where a man and woman, citizens of the same state, and subject to an absolute statutory prohibition against entering into a marriage contract which is against good morals and contrary to public policy, leave their domicil and enter another for the express purpose of violating the law of their domicil in this respect, the case is highly exceptional, and the great weight of authority is against the validity of such a marriage in the place of their domicil. There have been conflicting decisions upon the question, but very few of them sustain the validity of the relation where it has been assumed for an intended evasion of the law of the domicil and is contrary to good morals. The fact of such an intended evasion has been repeatedly recognized as the basis of invalidity when otherwise validity would have been declared. Thus, in a noted
The foregoing reasoning is satisfactory to us. It invokes practically three distinct ideas, to wit: (1) that the foreign marriage-is contrary to the positive statute of the domicil; (2) that it is contrary to the public policy of the government of the- domicil, in that it offends against the prevailing sense of good morals-among the people..there dwelling; and (3) it .was contracted
In Brook v. Brook, 9 H. L. Cases, 212, another celebrated English case, where a man had married his deceased wife’s sister contrary to a British statute, the parties having gone to Denmark for that purpose, where such marriages were lawful, Lord Chancellor Campbell said: “ It is quite obvious that no civilized state can allow its domiciled subjects or citizens, by making a temporary visit to a foreign country, to enter into a contract to be performed in the place of domicil, if the contract is forbidden by the law of the place of domicil as contrary to the law of religion or immorality or any of its fundamental institutions.” And again: “ If a marriage is absolutely forbidden in any country as being contrary to public policy, and leading to social evils, I think that the domiciled inhabitants of that country cannot be permitted, by passing the frontier and entering another state in which this marriage is not prohibited, to celebrate a marriage forbidden by their own state, and immediately returning to their own state to insist on their marriage being recognized as lawful.”
Upon the foregoing authorities, there is no doubt as to what the law is in England on this subject. It seems to us that these decisions are founded upon impregnable reasoning which cannot be answered, and these decisions apply with the greatest possible force to the case in hand. For in those cases the statutes did not prohibit marriages involving immoral considerations, but here where the subsequent marriage is a sort of reward for the prior adulterous intercourse, and as the subsequent cohabitation is distinctly offensive to all good .citizens, the conclusion of invalidity is immensely strengthened by considerations of the ' greatest force.
In North Carolina, in the case of Williams v. Oates, 5 Iredell’s Law Reports, 535, involving the same principle, and almost the
In Marshall v. Marshall, 2 Hun, 238, decided in 1874, the facts were that the plaintiff, Marshall, in 1858, was divorced from his then wife on the ground of his adultery. The parties to the divorce were then domiciled in New York. In 1866 the husband and another woman, both then residing in New York, went to Philadelphia to be married there, intending to return immediately to New York. They were married in Philadelphia, the first wife still living, and returned to New York as intended. It was held that the second marriage was absolutely void on the ground that “if citizens leave their own country and contract a marriage abroad, such marriage being forbidden by the law of tlie country of their residence, but allowed by the country where it is contracted, and being celebrated with an intent to resume and followed by an actual resumption of their old residence, the validity of tlie contract is to be determined by the law of the domicil.”
It is true that this case was afterwards overruled in the case of Van Voorhis v. Brintnall, 86 N. Y. 18, decided in 1881, but as neither of these decisions is binding upon us we much prefer tlie ruling in Marshall v. Marshall. It is also true that in Medway v. Needham, 16 Mass. 157 (1819), a contrary decision was made in the case of a marriage between a mulatto and a white woman which was solemnized in Rhode Island where it was not unlawful, it was held valid in Massachusetts where such marriages were prohibited, although the parties were domiciled in Massachusetts and immediately returned there. The marriage was not questioned because it was contrary to good morals, but only because it was contrary to the words of the Massachusetts
It is proper to observe that the leading text writers on the conflict of laws express the same conclusions as embodying the latest and best considered doctrine upon this subject. Thus in Story’s Conflict of Laws, sec; 86, it is said: “But'we are not therefore to conclude that every marriage hy and between British subjects in foreign countries will be held valid, because it is celebrated according to the laws of such countries. On the contrary, where the laws of England create a personal incapacity to contract marriage, that incapacity has in some cases been held to have a universal operation, so as to make a subsequent marriage in a foreign country a mere nullity when litigated in a British court. Sec. 87. Indeed the general principle adopted in England in regard to cases of this sort appears to be, that the lex loci contractus shall be permitted to prevail, unless where it works some manifest injustice, or is contra bonos mores, or is repugnant to the settled principles and policy of its own laws.” In sec. 112, quoting from Lord Robertson, in Fergusson on Marriage and Divorce, 397 to 399, it is said: “But a party who is domiciled here cannot be permitted to import into this country a law peculiar to his own case which is in opposition to those great and important public laws which our legislature has held to be essentially connected with the best interests of society.” In a foot note to sec. 116, the author quotes from 1 Burge Com. on Col. and For. Law, pp. 188 to 191, as follows: “The law which prohibits persons related to each other in a certain degree from intermarrying, and declares their intermarriage to be null, imposes on them a personal incapacity quoad that act; and that incapacity must continue to affect them as long as they retain their
In Whart. Confl. of Laws, sec. 159, the writer says: “But, when persons domiciled in a state where these prohibitions are in force arc married without the domicil, in violation of such prohibitions, in a state where there is no opposing legislation, the parties visiting the latter state for this purpose, will the former state recognize the validity of the marriage? The first point for the court of such a state to determine on such an issue is whether the prohibition of such marriages is pail of the distinctive policy of the state. If so, the court acting on the reasoning already given, must hold that persons domiciled in such state cannot evade its laws by going to another state and then returning to live in the home state in a union that state condemns. And so it has been ruled on several occasions:” Kinney v. Com., 30 Gratt. 858; Williams v. Oates, 5 Ired. Law Rep. 538; State v. Kennedy, 76 N. C. 251; Scott v. State, 39 Ga. 321; Dupre v. Boulard, 10 La. Ann. 411.
• Upon the whole case we consider that the weight of authority is against the validity of the marriage we are now considering, and upon well settled principles we are convinced that it should not bo sustained.
The decree of the court below is affirmed and the appeal is dismissed at the cost of the appellant.