127 P.2d 421 | Kan. | 1942
The opinion of the court was delivered by
This was an action to recover on a judgment for child support rendered in a divorce action in Missouri. The plaintiff filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings, for the total amount of the weekly installments unpaid during the five-year period immediately prior to the filing of the action. From an order sustaining this motion the defendant appeals. The question is whether recovery was barred by the statute of limitations.
Brief statement of the facts will suffice. Velma Mae Kleitz was granted a divorce from Carl L. Kleitz in Jackson county, Missouri, on September 15, 1933, both parties then being residents of that county. The plaintiff was awarded the custody of a minor child, then five years of age, and the defendant ordered to pay ten dollars a week for the support of the child until further order of the
■The issue here narrows to the one question as to when our statute of limitations started to run on the unpaid installments falling due within the five-year period preceding the filing of the petition. No installments due and unpaid for more than five -years are involved, and under the pleadings there is no attempt to collect them. There is no question that under our decisions, as applied to judgments for child support in this state, the statute of limitations begins to run on installments only from the date when they become due and are unpaid. (McGill v. McGill, 101 Kan. 324, 166 Pac. 501; Sharp v. Sharp, 154 Kan. 175, 117 P. 2d 561; McKee v. McKee, 154 Kan. 340, 118 P. 2d 544.) Under our statute, the period of limitation starts to run when “the cause of action shall have accrued” and obviously no cause of action arises to collect an installment until such installment is due. But appellant contends that under Missouri law and decisions the statute starts to run on installment payments on the day the judgment is entered and not at the later dates when the installments become due, and that the Missouri law rather than the
The general rule is that in respect to the limitation of actions the law of the forum governs, and if any exceptions to this rule are to be recognized, such exceptions must be found in the law of the forum itself. (37 C. J. 729; 34 Am. Jur. p. 51; Nickel v. Vogel, 76 Kan. 625, 635, 92 Pac. 1105; Good v. Kleinhammer, 122 Kan. 105, 108, 251 Pac. 405; Newell v. Harrison Engineering & Const. Corp., 149 Kan. 838, 89 P. 2d 869.) Our statute contains one modification of the rule, in a provision that if the cause of action arose in another state between nonresidents of this state and recovery is barred under the laws of that state, no action thereon can be maintained in this state (G. S. 1935, 60-310; Nickel v. Vogel, supra). In other words, in such a case the Kansas period of limitation will be applied unless the law of the foreign jurisdiction provides a lesser period, in which event such lesser period will be applied to bar recovery. To put it still another way, where recovery is barred in the other state, no action can be maintained in this state even though recovery would not be barred here if the cause of action had arisen in this state.
As already stated, recovery in this case is not barred under Missouri law. Nor is it barred under our law because the statute did not start to run on any installments until they were in default and had not run on any installments falling due within five years prior to commencement of the action.
The judgment is affirmed.