Knipfer v. BuhlerKnipfer v. Buhler
- Reporters:
- , ,
- Before:
- Gallagher
On July 3, 1919, a Wisconsin court granted plaintiff a divorce from defendant and entered its judgment and decree awarding plaintiff the sum of $28 per month for the support of their minor child, Harold Buhler, who was then ten years оld. Defendant made the payments under this decree until July 1, 1920. Defendant then moved to Colorado and made no further payments to plaintiff. In 1926, plaintiff filed a complaint in Wisconsin for nonpayment of this support money, but because of technical difficulties nothing came of this suit. In 1928, unbeknown to plaintiff, defendаnt moved to California and there remarried. In 1945, defendant inherited *335 some property in Minnesota, and in 1946 plaintiff instituted this suit for nonpayment of the support money under the Wisconsin divorce decree, levied a writ of attachment on the property inherited by defendant, and obtained service by publication. To facilitate the sale of this property, plaintiff released her writ of attachmеnt, and the sum of §7,000 was deposited with the clerk of the district court of Eamsey county in lieu of the real еstate.
The trial court found that the Wisconsin judgment or decree had never been modified, amendеd, changed, altered, rescinded, vacated, reversed, or suspended in any way at any time and that the time for appeal from the judgment had expired under the laws of Wisconsin. Judgment was ordered fоr plaintiff for the full amount of such support payments from July 1, 1920, through January 1930, the month during which the minor son reached his majority. This appeal is from an order denying defendant’s motion for a new trial.
The chief defеnse asserted by defendant, and the one upon which we choose to rest our decision, is that this is an action on a foreign judgment, and, as such, that it is barred by the Minnesota statute of limitations, M. S. A. 541.04, which provides:
“No action shall be maintained upon a judgment or decree of a court of the United States, or of any state or territory thereof, unless begun within ten years after the entry of such judgment.”
With reference to the period of time a domestic judgment requiring the payment of money shall survive and the lien thereof continue in Minnesota, § 548.09 provides in part:
“* * * Such judgment shall survive, and the lien thereof continue, for the period of ten years next after its entry, cmd no longer(Italics supplied.)
Defendant’s pleading brings into issue the statute of limitations on this type of action. Statutes which limit the period within which aсtions may be commenced are generally considered procedural, and thereforе the law of the forum is applied. Weston v. Jones,
That case involved an attempt to compel by contempt proceedings the payment of arrearages in support money after the child had reached its majority. After holding that this was not the proper remedy, but that the wife was relegаted to an independent action either of debt upon a record or .judgment or in restitution, the сourt said that the proper statute of limitation to apply to the judgment involved was Wisconsin St. 1947, § 330.16. That stаtute provides a 20-year limitation on “An action upon a judgment or decree of any court оf record of this state or of the United States sitting within this state.” The court then went on to say (
“* * * While the portiоns of the divorce judgment in this case requiring the payment of support money were subject to chаnge and modification during the minority of the children the divorce court for reasons heretoforе outlined completely lost jurisdiction at majority to deal with the amounts due and these became fixed and beyond the control of the court. The judgment and its various amendments fixed defendant’s duty to pay sums certain in money and the amount due is arrived at by a computation based upon the recоrd.”
Further, our court has held that similar foreign judgments, subject to modification or cancellation and рayable in installments, are absolute and final as to all installments which have accrued under the judgmеnt as long as the judgment is absolute in its terms and remains unmodified, or, at least, until an application for mоdification is made. Ladd v. Martineau,
This suit is properly viewed as an action on a foreign judgment, and thе proper statute of limitations to apply is § 511.01. That statute places an absolute limit of ten yеars on such actions, and it is not in any way tolled or modified by § 511.13, which tolls other statutes of limitation for periods during which the defendant is absent from the state. Gaines v. Grunewald,
It follows that after January 22, 1910, action on this Wisconsin judgment was outlawed, and the judgment was functus officio in Minnesota. Therefore this action, commenced in 1916, cannot be maintained.
Reversed.