Edward Douglass White

“ Where a court of one state has decreed the future payment of alimony, and when an instalment or instalments of the alimony so decreed have become due and payable and are unpaid, is such a judgment as to accrued and past-due alimony ordinarily embraced within the scope of the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution of the United States so as to impose the constitutional duty upon the court of another state to give effect to such judgment? ”

“ Thus, the methods of enforcing payment of the future alimony awarded, provided by the statute, all contemplate the collection and paying over as a matter of right of the instalments as they accrue, as long as the judgments remains unmodified, or, at least, until application has been made or permission to make one in pursuance to the statute has been accorded. And the force of this suggestion is accentuated when it is considered that it was not unusual in New York to resort to executions as upon a judgment at law to enforce the collection of unpaid instalments of alimony. ”

“ A brief consideration of the state of the law of New York concerning the power to modify allowances for alimony prior to the enactment of the provisions as to modification in question, and the rulings of the court of last resort of New York on the subject of such power, we think will serve to further establish the impossibility, in reason, of supposing that the statutory provisions in question conferred the broad and absolute power of retroaction as to past-due instalments of alimony which the court below assumed to exist. ”