{
  "id": 1475709,
  "name": "Porter v. Porter",
  "name_abbreviation": "Porter v. Porter",
  "decision_date": "1945-11-19",
  "docket_number": "4-7747",
  "first_page": "371",
  "last_page": "374",
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      "cite": "209 Ark. 371"
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    {
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      "cite": "190 S.W.2d 440"
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    "name_abbreviation": "Ark.",
    "id": 8808,
    "name": "Arkansas Supreme Court"
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      "category": "reporters:state_regional",
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      "reporter": "Ark.",
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  "last_updated": "2023-07-14T17:58:59.179776+00:00",
  "provenance": {
    "date_added": "2019-08-29",
    "source": "Harvard",
    "batch": "2018"
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  "casebody": {
    "judges": [],
    "parties": [
      "Porter v. Porter."
    ],
    "opinions": [
      {
        "text": "McFaddin, J.\nThis is a divorce case. In 1938, the parties were married in South Carolina, axxd lived there together until separation in December, 1942. Appellee, Lewis Porter, arrived in Arkansas on April 29, 1944, and filed suit for divorce against appellant, Florrie Porter, on July 3,1944. The alleged grounds of divorce were indignities. A divorce decree was granted Lewis Porter by the Pulaski Chancery Court on August 3, 1944; but this decree was set aside by the Court on September 29, 1944, on a showing by appellant that she had been prevented by unavoidable casualty from making her defense and that she had a meritorious defense. The order of September 29th, setting aside the decree of August 3rd, reads ixx part:\n\u201c. . . The Court, being well and sufficiently advised as to all matters of law and fact arising' herein, doth order that the said decree granting a divorce to the plaintiff from the defendaxxt on August 3rd, 1944, as now shown of record in Yol. 65, page 483, be and the same is hereby cancelled, set aside, vacated, and held for naught, and that the answer of the defendant attached to said motion be considered and treated as the answer of the. defendaxxt to the allegations in the complaint of the plaintiff, the issues thereby made to be submitted to the Court at a later date. \u2019 \u2019\nThe effect of this order, as shown by its terms, was to leave the divorce case pending, as though no decree had ever been rendered. See 31 Am. Juris. 264 and 31 Am. Juris. 319. Thereafter, on January 10, 1945, the Court heard the evidence of both parties and supporting witnesses oxx the question of residence and also grounds for divorce; and on February 1,1945, a decree of divorce was granted Lewis Porter. Florrie Porter lias appealed.\nWe pretermit any discussion of the grounds of divorce, because we are convinced that the plaintiff (appellee here) has failed to prove the residence requirements which are essential to jurisdiction. Section 4386, Pope\u2019s Digest (which is Act No. 71 of 1931) says in part:\n\u201cThe plaintiff, to obtain a divorce, must prove . . . in addition to a legal cause for divorce:\n\u201cFirst: A residence in the State for three months next before the final judgment granting a divorce in the action . .\nThe plaintiff wholly failed to prove a residence for three months next before the hearing of January 10,1945, or next before the decree of February 1, 1945, which is the \u201cfinal judgment granting the divorce in the action,\u201d since the decree of August 3, 1944, was completely set aside and annulled, as previously shown.\nThe plaintiff testified that he remained in Arkansas continuously from April 29, 1944, to August 10, 1944; that he then left Arkansas and went to New York for a month, and then went direct to Charleston, South Carolina, and repossessed his old office, and resumed his practice of chiropody, and remained in Charleston, South Carolina, continuously from September, 1944, until a few days before January 10,1945, when he came to Arkansas to testify in this divorce case. Appellee\u2019s witnesses, while supporting him in his testimony that he had been in Arkansas continuously from April 29, 1944, to August 10, 1944, also testified that appellee had not been in Arkansas from August 10, 1944, until January, 1945.\nIn Parseghian v. Parseghian, 206 Ark. 869, 178 S. W. 2d 49, we had under consideration the same statute as is here involved \u2014 that is, \u00a7 4386, Pope\u2019s Digest. There, we were considering the requirements of two months\u2019 residence prior to filing the complaint for divorce, while, here, we are considering the requirement of three months \u2019 residence \u201cnext before the final judgment granting a divorce in the action.\u201d But the reasoning in the Parseghian ease applies with equal force to the case at bar, and we, there, said that the residence requirement was jurisdictional.\nThe appellee tried to show that he all the time (from August, 1944, to January, 1945) intended to come back to Arkansas; but Ms actions speak louder than Ms words: during Ms sojourn in Arkansas, appellee had, all the time, left his automobile in Charleston, South Carolina ; the telephone in the office at Charleston had all the time remained in his name; all his property had remained in South Carolina except that part-of his clothing and those few vocational instruments which he brought to' Arkansas with him. After he obtained the decree on August 3, 1944, appellee gave up the room where he had been boarding in Arkansas, and took away with him everything that he had brought to Arkansas \u2014 evidently on the assumption that his divorce residence requirements had been fulfilled (a factual question not before us). But when the Court, on September 29, 1944, set aside the decree of August 3, 1944, the appellee failed to return to Arkansas, and remain for three months \u201cnext before the final judgment granting a divorce in the action. \u2019 \u2019 Pie thereby defeated his own divorce suit in that he failed to confer, by actual residence, any jurisdiction on the Pulaski Chancery Court to award him a divorce, even under the case of Squire v. Squire, 186 Ark. 511, 54 S. W. 2d 281, which, itself, has become a controversial holding.\nIt follows that the decree of the Chancery Court awarding the appellee a divorce is reversed, and appellee\u2019s action for divorce is dismissed at the cost of appellee.",
        "type": "majority",
        "author": "McFaddin, J."
      },
      {
        "text": "Griffin Smith, Chief Justice,\nconcurring. There is the statement in Squire v. Squire, referred to in the majority opinion, that \u201cEven though [the plaintiff] moved to this State to bring a divorce suit and had the intention of leaving after the divorce was granted, this would not deprive the Court of jurisdiction, if she were actually and in good faith a bona fide resident for the period prescribed by the statute.\u201d\nAlthough the Squire case has been followed by other decisions in which the statutory period was discussed, it is inconceivable that the General Assembly intended to invite dissatisfied non-residents to purchase round-trip tickets good for ninety days and come to Arkansas for the procurement of a divorce. The \u201cgood faith\u201d spoken of in the opinion is so patently wanting in the very quality it mentions that bona fide has no meaning.\nI think we should overrule what was there said and substitute a consistent declaration in respect of good faith.",
        "type": "concurrence",
        "author": "Griffin Smith, Chief Justice,"
      }
    ],
    "attorneys": [
      "Downie \u00a3 Downie and Elmer Schoggen, fox- appellant.",
      "J. R. Booker and Taylor Roberts, for appellee."
    ],
    "corrections": "",
    "head_matter": "Porter v. Porter.\n4-7747\n190 S. W. 2d 440\nOpinion delivered November 19, 1945.\nDownie \u00a3 Downie and Elmer Schoggen, fox- appellant.\nJ. R. Booker and Taylor Roberts, for appellee."
  },
  "file_name": "0371-01",
  "first_page_order": 387,
  "last_page_order": 390
}