Atherton v. Atherton

Citations

• 181 U.S. 155
• 21 S. Ct. 544
• 45 L. Ed. 794
• 1901 U.S. LEXIS 1353

Syllabus

<p>A husband and wife had their matrimonial domicil in Kentucky, which was the domicil of the husband. She left him there, and returned to her mother’s at Clinton in the State of New York. He filed a petition against her in a court of Kentucky for a divorce from the bond of matrimony for her abandonment, which was a cause of divorce by the laws of Kentucky; and alleged on oath, as required by the statutes of Kentucky, that she might be found at Clinton, and that Clinton was the post-office nearest the place where she might be found. The clerk, as required by those statutes, entered a warning order to the wife to appear in sixty days, and appointed an attorney at law for. her. The attorney wrote to her at Clinton, advising her of the object of the petition, and enclosing a cop/ thereof, in a letter addressed to her by mail at that place, and having on the envelope a direction to return it to him, if not delivered in ten days. . A month later, the attorney, having received no answer, made his report to the court, Five weeks afterwards, the court, after taking evidence, granted the husband an absolute decree of divorce for the wife’s abandonment of him. Held, that this decree was a bar to the wife’s petition for a divorce in New York.</p>