Some Problems in Jurisdiction to Divorce

The American Law Institute in its Restatement of the Conflict of Laws has codified the rules governing jurisdiction of a court to grant a divorce, where no personal jurisdiction of the defendant is obtained, as follows: A state cannot exercise through its courts jurisdiction to dissolve the marriage of spouses of whom one is domiciled within the state and the other is domiciled outside the state, unless the spouse who is not domiciled in the state (a) has permitted the other spouse to acquire a separate home; or by his misconduct has ceased to have the right to object to the acquisition of such separate home;... I It is supposed that a divorce granted under the conditions mentioned is intended to be one that will be entitled to full faith and credit in every state of the Union under the federal constitution. The question, therefore, is exclusively one of federal constitutional law. It will be the purpose of this paper to consider the present state of the federal authorities and to determine whether the Restatement accurately embodies within its terms the rules of these decisions. So far as the writer knows, there are only three federal Supreme Court decisions dealing with this important problem: Atherton v. Itherton, Haddock v. Haddock, and Thompson v. Thompson