Seeley v. Erringer

57 N.W.2d 628, 239 Minn. 27, 1953 Minn. LEXIS 591
CourtSupreme Court of Minnesota
DecidedMarch 20, 1953
DocketNo. 35,866
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 57 N.W.2d 628 (Seeley v. Erringer) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Minnesota primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Seeley v. Erringer, 57 N.W.2d 628, 239 Minn. 27, 1953 Minn. LEXIS 591 (Mich. 1953).

Opinion

Christianson, Justice.

This is an appeal from a judgment on the pleadings in favor of respondent, Theodore C. Erringer, affirming an order of the probate court denying the petition of appellants, Bessie M. Seeley and Minnie T. Fitterling Sharpe, to admit to probate an alleged lost or destroyed will of decedent, Clara G. Fitterling Kinkead.

Appellants’ statement of propositions of law and fact in the district court made the following allegations of fact material to this

[29]*29appeal:2 Respondent and Mildred T. Brringer were married in this state on December 30, 1943, and were divorced in this state by a decree dated October 9, 1944. Less than five months later, on March 3, 1945, respondent, without disclosing any information about his divorce, procured an affidavit from one W. F. Sharpe stating in part that respondent had not been divorced within one year. He then used Sharpe’s affidavit to induce an official of the state of Iowa to issue a marriage license to himself and decedent. On the same date respondent and decedent, who were residents and citizens of this state, entered into a purported marriage in Iowa. After the purported marriage was performed, they returned to this state and resided here until decedent’s death on December 14, 1946.

Approximately two years before her purported marriage to respondent, decedent had duly executed a will leaving the bulk of her estate to the three children of appellant Seeley and the three children of appellant Sharpe and appointing both appellants executrices of her will. Following decedent’s death, respondent petitioned for general administration of her estate but did not disclose the existence of her will or the foregoing facts relative to his marriage to her. The probate court, on March 15, 1948, found that decedent had died intestate and that respondent was her only heir-at-law and decreed that all of her personal property and title to all of her real estate be assigned to and vested in respondent. Some 20 months later, appellants petitioned the probate court to prove decedent’s lost or destroyed will.3 The court denied the petition, and appellants appealed to the district court which affirmed the order of the probate court. This appeal is from the judgment of the district court.

[30]*30The question presented is whether the purported marriage between respondent and decedent in Iowa, which was contrary to the provision of M. S. A. 517.03 that no marriage shall be contracted within six months after either party has been divorced from a former spouse, revoked decedent’s will under § 525.191, which provides that if a testator marries after making a will the will is thereby revoked.

1-2-3. The validity of a marriage normally is determined by the law of the place where the marriage is contracted.4 If valid by that law the marriage is valid everywhere unless it violates a strong public policy of the domicile of the parties.5

Turning first to the local law of Iowa, where the purported marriage in the instant case was contracted, we find certain statutes which must be considered in determining whether the marriage was valid under the law of that state.

Iowa Code Ann. 595.3 provides:

“Previous to the solemnization of any marriage, a license for that purpose must be obtained from the clerk of the district court of the county wherein the marriage is to be solemnized. Such license must not be granted in any case: [here follows a list of circumstances, none of which is involved in the instant case].”

Iowa Code Ann. 595.4 provides:

“When an application for a license is made the clerk shall require at least one affidavit from some competent and disinterested person, stating such facts as to age and qualification of the parties as the clerk may deem necessary to determine the competency of the parties to contract a marriage.”

[31]*31No Iowa statute declares what effect obtaining the license by a fraudulent affidavit has upon the validity of the marriage, and we have found no Iowa case declaring the effect. Thus in applying these Iowa statutes we must attempt to predict how the supreme court of Iowa would interpret them. It is generally held that, in the absence of a legislative declaration to the contrary, the validity of a marriage is not affected by the fact that the marriage license was obtained by fraud or perjury,6 and we have no reason to believe that the Iowa court would interpret the Iowa statutes in any other way. See, Johnson v. Johnson, 214 Minn. 462, 468, 8 N. W. (2d) 620, 623. We therefore hold that, under Iowa law, the marriage in the instant case was not invalidated by fraud in obtaining the license.

Iowa Code Ann. 598.17 provides:

“In every case in which a divorce is decreed, neither party shall marry again within a year from the date of the filing of said decree unless permission to do so is granted by the court in such decree.”

Iowa Code Ann. 598.18 provides:

“Any person marrying contrary to the provisions of section 598.17 shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and punished accordingly.”

We are of the opinion that the supreme court of Iowa, if faced with the question whether these statutes apply to the marriage in the instant case, would hold them inapplicable. In Lee v. Lee, 150 Iowa 611, 130 N. W. 128, the Iowa court found it unnecessary to decide whether the Iowa statute applied to every decree of divorce, whether obtained in Iowa or elsewhere, but the court said that, if it were necessary to decide the question, it would have difficulty in applying the statute to a decree obtained in another state. The same year the Iowa court, in Dudley v. Dudley, 151 Iowa 142, 130 [32]*32N. W. 785, 32 L.R.A. (N.S.) 1170, decided that an order in a divorce decree granting custody of a child to the divorced wife would not be modified merely because she had married another man in Nebraska shortly after the divorce, contrary to the terms of both the Iowa and Nebraska statutes.7 The court said that she was not guilty of any violation of law because the Iowa statute did not apply to a marriage in Nebraska and, more important to the question now being considered, because the Nebraska statute did not apply where the decree of divorce was not entered in that state. In Webster v. Modern Woodmen, 192 Iowa 1376, 186 N. W. 659, a woman who had been divorced in Illinois married another man in Iowa within a year. At the time of their marriage both were domiciled in Iowa. The opinion deals primarily with the question whether the Illinois statute made the marriage void, but in the course of its opinion sustaining the validity of the marriage the court said that it was not made void by the Iowa statute. This decision was subsequently followed in Pickard v. Pickard, 241 Iowa 1307, 45 N. W. (2d) 269, where a marriage was held valid upon similar facts.

Although the Iowa supreme court has not directly passed upon the precise question presented here, the above cases indicate quite clearly the court’s attitude toward the Iowa statute. In view of these cases, we conclude that the Iowa statute (Iowa Code Ann. 598.17) is inapplicable to the marriage in the instant case because respondent’s prior divorce was granted in Minnesota and not in Iowa.

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Bluebook (online)
57 N.W.2d 628, 239 Minn. 27, 1953 Minn. LEXIS 591, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/seeley-v-erringer-minn-1953.