## Facts

- David S. Maynard and Lydia A. Maynard married in Vermont in 1828 and later lived in Ohio, where they had children.
- In 1850, David left Lydia and the children in Ohio, moved to Oregon Territory, and did not thereafter support them.
- In 1852, David settled 640 acres under the federal Oregon Donation Act as a “married man,” which conditioned title on four years’ residence and cultivation and contemplated a marital division of the grant.
- In December 1852, the Oregon territorial legislature enacted a special statute dissolving David and Lydia’s marriage.
- Lydia was not an Oregon resident, allegedly received no notice of the legislative action, and learned of it months later.
- After the legislative divorce, David remarried, completed the statutory residence and cultivation period in 1856, and later conveyed interests derived from the donation claim; he died in 1873.
- David and Lydia’s children sued grantees holding title to the land, seeking equitable relief to treat them as trustees and compel conveyance based on Lydia’s asserted half interest.

## Issues

1. Whether the Oregon territorial legislature had power to dissolve a marriage by special legislative act.
2. Whether a legislative divorce was invalid under constitutional or territorial prohibitions on impairing contracts, including where granted without notice to the nonresident wife.
3. Whether the wife acquired a vested half interest under the Oregon Donation Act before completion of the statute’s four-year conditions, such that a later divorce could not defeat it.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed dismissal of the children’s equitable action.
- The Court held the territorial legislature could grant a special legislative divorce as a proper subject of territorial legislative power.
- The Court held dissolution of marriage by legislation did not violate prohibitions on impairing contracts because marriage is not a mere private contract for Contract Clause purposes.
- The Court held the divorce’s validity was not defeated by lack of notice to Lydia; once legislative competence over marital status existed, judicial inquiry into motives or procedure was not a ground to invalidate the act.
- The Court held Lydia had no vested interest in the donation land at the time of divorce because the federal grant did not vest until the four-year residence and cultivation conditions were satisfied.

## Legal Principles

- Marriage, though founded on mutual agreement, is a legal status whose rights and obligations are set by law and subject to public control, not merely a private contract.
- Legislative dissolution of marriage, within the legislature’s authority, is not barred by constitutional or territorial provisions forbidding laws that impair the obligation of contracts.
- When the legislature has authority over the marital status of a resident, lack of notice to the nonresident spouse does not, by itself, invalidate a legislative divorce in a federal collateral attack.
- Under conditional federal land-grant statutes requiring residence and cultivation, no vested title passes until statutory conditions are fulfilled; prior to completion, the settler holds only a possessory right.
- A spouse divorced before completion of the statutory conditions does not take the spousal share contemplated by the land-grant statute when title later vests.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld the Oregon Territory’s special act dissolving the Maynard marriage, rejected Contract Clause-based challenges by treating marriage as a status regulated by law, and ruled that the wife’s claimed Donation Act share never vested because the statutory conditions were completed only after the divorce.


Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190 (1888)