## Facts

- Doris Hermes Crumpler Mayer and her first husband were domiciliaries of North Carolina.
- Doris sought to marry Victor Mayer without satisfying North Carolina’s one-year separation requirement.
- With Victor’s active assistance, Doris traveled to the Dominican Republic and obtained a divorce decree dissolving her first marriage.
- Doris and Victor then married.
- After the relationship deteriorated, Doris sued in North Carolina for divorce from bed and board, permanent alimony, alimony pendente lite, and attorney’s fees.
- Victor denied the existence of a lawful marriage and counterclaimed for annulment, asserting the Dominican divorce was void under North Carolina law and that Doris knew it.
- The trial court, at the close of Doris’s evidence on pendente lite motions, found the Dominican divorce invalid, deemed the Mayers’ marriage void, and concluded Victor was not estopped from denying the divorce’s validity; it denied alimony pendente lite and attorney’s fees.

## Issues

1. Whether a Dominican Republic divorce obtained by North Carolina domiciliaries lacked jurisdictional validity under North Carolina law.
2. If the foreign divorce was invalid, whether Doris and Victor’s subsequent marriage was void for purposes of denying spousal support.
3. Whether Victor, who actively assisted in procuring the foreign divorce and then married Doris, was equitably estopped from challenging the divorce’s validity and from avoiding marital obligations.

## Decision

- The court held the Dominican Republic divorce decree was invalid under North Carolina law.
- The court further held Victor was estopped from asserting the decree’s invalidity.
- The court also held Victor was estopped from avoiding the consequences of his marriage contract with Doris, including spousal-support obligations.
- The denial of alimony pendente lite and attorney’s fees was reversed, and the case was remanded for further proceedings consistent with the estoppel holdings.

## Legal Principles

- A foreign-country “migratory” divorce obtained by domiciliaries of North Carolina without a proper jurisdictional basis is invalid under North Carolina law.
- Equitable estoppel may bar a spouse from attacking an invalid foreign divorce when that spouse actively participated in procuring the decree and then accepted its benefits by entering the subsequent marriage.
- A spouse may be estopped from denying the legal consequences of the marriage relationship where the spouse’s conduct induced reliance and the spouse seeks to use the foreign divorce’s invalidity as a means to evade support obligations.

## Conclusion

North Carolina treated the Dominican Republic divorce as invalid but applied equitable estoppel to prevent the spouse who helped procure the decree from repudiating it to defeat the other spouse’s claims for pendente lite support and attorney’s fees, requiring further proceedings with marital obligations enforced against him.


Mayer v. Mayer, 311 S.E.2d 659 (N.C. Ct. App. 1984)