## Facts

- A Kansas district court granted Mark Yockers a divorce from Claudine Dombrowski.
- After the divorce decree, the district court retained jurisdiction over a dispute concerning Yockers’s missing firearms.
- During post-decree proceedings, the court subpoenaed Bill Miller, and Miller testified that he had obtained the firearms from Dombrowski.
- Yockers pursued relief in the dissolution case through a replevin motion seeking return of the firearms.
- Miller appeared at hearings in response to subpoenas and asserted that he was entitled to keep the firearms as a bona fide purchaser.
- The district court rejected Miller’s bona fide purchaser position and entered an order directing Miller to return the firearms to Yockers.
- Miller’s counsel promptly moved to set aside that return order on the ground that the court lacked personal jurisdiction over Miller.
- The district court granted Miller’s motion and set aside its prior order.
- Yockers appealed, arguing that Miller’s personal-jurisdiction objection was too late and was barred by Miller’s involvement in the proceedings.

## Issues

1. Did Miller’s participation in the proceedings—appearing under subpoena, testifying, and asserting a claim to the firearms—amount to a general appearance or waiver that prevented him from later objecting to personal jurisdiction?
2. Could the district court, within the divorce case and related replevin proceedings, enter an enforceable in personam order requiring a nonparty third person to return property without first obtaining personal jurisdiction over that person?

## Decision

- The Kansas Court of Appeals affirmed the district court.
- The court agreed that the district court lacked personal jurisdiction over Miller when it ordered him to return the firearms.
- The court rejected Yockers’s argument that Miller’s subpoena-driven participation made the later jurisdictional challenge untimely or waived.
- Because the return order was entered without personal jurisdiction over Miller, the district court properly set it aside.

## Legal Principles

- A court must have personal jurisdiction over an individual before it may enter an enforceable order imposing personal obligations on that individual, including an order to deliver property.
- Responding to a subpoena and participating as a witness does not, by itself, constitute consent to personal jurisdiction for adjudication of claims against the witness.
- Participation that is compelled, rather than voluntary litigation conduct seeking affirmative relief, generally does not operate as a general appearance waiving a personal-jurisdiction objection.
- An order entered without personal jurisdiction over the person bound by the order is subject to being set aside as void.
- A divorce court’s retained authority to address marital-property questions between spouses does not automatically supply personal jurisdiction over third persons who possess disputed property.

## Conclusion

The Kansas Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s decision to vacate an order requiring Bill Miller to return firearms to Mark Yockers because the district court had not obtained personal jurisdiction over Miller, and Miller’s subpoenaed participation did not waive his right to challenge personal jurisdiction.


In re Marriage of Yockers, 134 P.3d 36 (Table), 2006 Kan. App. Unpub. LEXIS 503 (2006)