## Facts

- Defendant married his first wife in New York in 1905; they remained New York residents and had two children.
- In 1932, while still a New York resident, defendant went to Nevada and obtained an ex parte divorce from the first wife, who stayed in New York, was not personally served in Nevada, and did not appear.
- New York treated such a Nevada divorce as jurisdictionally invalid and not recognized.
- After obtaining the Nevada decree, defendant married plaintiff (his second wife) in New York and lived with her as husband and wife for about six years.
- Defendant then abandoned plaintiff, and she sued in New York for separation and support.
- Defendant asserted as a defense that, because his Nevada divorce was invalid, he remained married to his first wife; therefore, his marriage to plaintiff was void and he owed plaintiff no support.

## Issues

1. Whether a spouse who procured a foreign divorce decree that is jurisdictionally invalid in New York may invoke that invalidity to defeat a subsequent spouse’s action for separation and support by claiming the later marriage is void.
2. Whether equitable estoppel bars such a litigant from repudiating a decree he sought and relied upon when doing so would defeat the later spouse’s support rights.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals affirmed the order striking defendant’s defense as insufficient in law.
- The court held that, although the Nevada decree was not valid in New York due to lack of jurisdiction, defendant was precluded from impeaching that decree in this action to avoid his support obligation to plaintiff.
- The certified question was answered in the negative: defendant could not rely on the divorce’s invalidity as a defense to plaintiff’s separation and support claim.
- The court indicated that any competing claims of the first wife could be considered in assessing defendant’s ability to pay support, not by eliminating plaintiff’s claim entirely.

## Legal Principles

- A party who invokes a court’s jurisdiction and procures a judgment in his favor may be estopped from later repudiating that judgment when the repudiation would defeat rights arising from reliance on it, including support rights of a subsequent spouse.
- Estoppel in this setting is context-specific: it can bar the procuring party from attacking the decree for certain purposes without converting an otherwise invalid foreign divorce into a generally recognized dissolution of the first marriage in New York.
- In determining support obligations to a subsequent spouse, the existence of obligations to a prior spouse may affect the obligor’s ability to pay, but does not permit the obligor to deny all responsibility to the subsequent spouse by asserting the invalidity of a divorce he obtained.

## Conclusion

The court held that a husband who obtained and acted upon an ex parte Nevada divorce could not later claim the decree’s New York invalidity to treat his second marriage as void and escape separation and support duties; equitable estoppel barred that defense, while any interests of the first wife could be weighed in fixing the amount of support.


Krause v. Krause, 282 N.Y. 355, 26 N.E.2d 290 (N.Y. 1940)