Virginia Court Properly Gives Full Faith and Credit to a Massachusetts Divorce Decree

In the case of Cherin v. Cherin, the Virginia Court of Appeals, in an unpublished opinion, rules that the trial court in the case properly gave a Massachusetts Divorce Decree full faith and credit in Virginia.  Husband argues the trial court should not have granted full faith and credit to the Massachusetts judgment because he challenges that court’s personal jurisdiction over him and because the trial court refused to grant full faith and credit to a Virginia injunction prohibiting wife from proceeding in Massachusetts. Additionally, he argues wife was precluded from seeking a dismissal of the Virginia action under principles of equity and the unclean hands doctrine because she failed to comply with a Virginia order enjoining her from proceeding in Massachusetts.

The trial court was correct because the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution and Virginia law requires Virginia to respect the judgments of another state, in this case, the Massachusetts Divorce Decree.  While the Virginia Court could inquire as to whether the Massachusetts Court entering the Decree had personal jurisdiction over the husband, if the inquiry reveals that the issue of personal jurisdiction was fully and fairly litigated in the foreign court, the Virginia Court cannot re-litigate that issue.  Because the record discloses the Massachusetts court’s personal jurisdiction was fully and fairly litigated and finally decided in that court’s jurisdiction, husband was barred from relitigating that issue in Virginia.

The principles of equity and the unclean hands doctrine cannot apply because the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibits use of the unclean hands doctrine to prevent application of that doctrine to the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution.

-Rob Hagy, Virginia Divorce and Family Law Attorney