Robert H. Jackson

“ But if we adhere to the holdings that the Nevada court had power over her for the purpose of blasting her marriage and opening the way to a successor, I do not see the justice of inventing a compensating confusion in the device of a divisible divorce by which the parties are half-bound and half-free and which permits Rice to have a wife who cannot become his widow and to leave a widow who was no longer his wife. ”

“ We have said that Nevada does have power to dissolve the marriage of a woman who never was there in her life, never invoked its law or its courts, did not submit herself to its jurisdiction, refused to answer its summons, and took no benefits from its judgments. ”

“ She married a man whom this Court says Nevada had a right to make free by such process. She had every right to believe her marriage complete and valid in all places and for all purposes. Certainly under the law of Nevada where she continued to reside it was valid, and this Court had held the out-of-state service sufficient to empower Nevada to take jurisdiction of Lillian for the purpose of dissolving her marriage. But now we say that Connecticut may find that Rice was not sufficiently domiciled in Nevada to give that State power to act on his complaint. ”