541 Opinion of the Court. Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U. S. 287. But the fact that marital capacity was changed does not mean that every other legal incidence of the marriage was necessarily affected. Although the point was not adjudicated in Barber v. Barber, 21 How. 582, 588, the Court in that case recognized that while a divorce decree obtained in Wisconsin by a husband from his absent wife might dissolve the vinculum of the marriage, it did not mean that he was freed from payment of alimony under an earlier separation decree granted by New York. An absolutist might quarrel with the result and demand a rule that once a divorce is granted, the whole of the marriage relation is dissolved, leaving no roots or tendrils of any kind. But there are few areas of the law in black and white. The greys are dominant and even among them the shades are innumerable. For the eternal problem of the law is one of making accommodations between conflicting interests. This is why most legal problems end as questions of degree. That is true of the present problem under the Full Faith and Credit Clause. The question involves important considerations both of law and of policy which it is essential to state. The situations where a judgment of one State has been denied full faith and credit in another State, because its enforcement would contravene the latter's policy, have been few and far between. See Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U. S. 287, 294–295; Magnolia Petroleum Co. v. Hunt, 320 U. S. 430, 438-439, and cases cited; Sherrer v. Sherrer, supra. The Full Faith and Credit Clause is not 2 See Bingham, In the Matter of Haddock v. Haddock, 21 Corn. L. Quart. 393; Radin, The Authenticated Full Faith and Credit Clause, 39 Ill. L. Rev. 1; Holt, The Bones of Haddock v. Haddock, 41 Mich. L. Rev. 1013, 1034; Barnhard, Haddock Reversed-Harbinger of the Divisible Divorce, 31 Geo. L. J. 210; Cook, Is Haddock v. Haddock Overruled, 18 Ind. L. J. 165. Opinion of the Court. 334 U.S. to be applied, accordion-like, to accommodate our personal predilections. It substituted a command for the earlier principles of comity and thus basically altered the status of the States as independent sovereigns. Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U. S. 287, 301-302; Sherrer v. Sherrer, supra. It ordered submission by one State even to hostile policies reflected in the judgment of another State, because the practical operation of the federal system, which the Constitution designed, demanded it. The fact that the requirements of full faith and credit, so far as judgments are concerned, are exacting, if not inexorable (Sherrer v. Sherrer, supra), does not mean, however, that the State of the domicile of one spouse may, through the use of constructive service, enter a decree that changes every legal incidence of the marriage relationship.* Marital status involves the regularity and integrity of the marriage relation. It affects the legitimacy of the offspring of marriage. It is the basis of criminal laws, as the bigamy prosecution in Williams v. North Carolina dramatically illustrates. The State has a considerable interest in preventing bigamous marriages and in protecting the offspring of marriages from being bastardized. The interest of the State extends to its domiciliaries. The State should have the power to guard its interest in them by changing or altering their marital status and by protecting them in that changed status throughout the farthest reaches of the nation. For a person domiciled in one State should not be allowed to suffer the penalties of 3 As respects statutes, see the discussion in Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U. S. 287, 295–296. The case is unlike Thompson v. Thompson, 226 U. S. 551, where the wife by her conduct forfeited her right to alimony under the laws of the State of the matrimonial domicile where her husband obtained the divorce, and hence could not retain a judgment for maintenance subsequently obtained in another jurisdiction. 541 Opinion of the Court. bigamy for living outside the State with the only one which the State of his domicile recognizes as his lawful wife. And children born of the only marriage which is lawful in the State of his domicile should not carry the stigma of bastardy when they move elsewhere. These are matters of legitimate concern to the State of the domicile. They entitle the State of the domicile to bring in the absent spouse through constructive service. In no other way could the State of the domicile have and maintain effective control of the marital status of its domiciliaries. Those are the considerations that have long permitted the State of the matrimonial domicile to change the marital status of the parties by an ex parte divorce proceeding, Thompson v. Thompson, 226 U. S. 551, considerations which in the Williams cases we thought were equally applicable to any State in which one spouse had established a bona fide domicile. See 317 U. S. pp. 300301. But those considerations have little relevancy here. In this case New York evinced a concern with this broken marriage when both parties were domiciled in New York and before Nevada had any concern with it. New York was rightly concerned lest the abandoned spouse be left impoverished and perhaps become a public charge. The problem of her livelihood and support is plainly a matter in which her community had a legitimate interest. The New York court, having jurisdiction over both parties, undertook to protect her by granting her a judgment of permanent alimony. Nevada, however, apparently follows the rule that dissolution of the marriage puts an end to a support order. See Herrick v. Herrick, 55 Nev. 59, 68, 25 P. 2d 378, 380. But the question is whether Nevada could under any circumstances adjudicate rights of respondent under the New York judgment when she was not personally served or did not appear in the proceeding. Opinion of the Court. 334 U.S. Bassett v. Bassett, 141 F. 2d 954, held that Nevada could not. We agree with that view. The New York judgment is a property interest of respondent, created by New York in a proceeding in which both parties were present. It imposed obligations on petitioner and granted rights to respondent. The property interest which it created was an intangible, jurisdiction over which cannot be exerted through control over a physical thing. Jurisdiction over an intangible can indeed only arise from control or power over the persons whose relationships are the source of the rights and obligations. Cf. Curry v. McCanless, 307 U. S. 357, 366. Jurisdiction over a debtor is sufficient to give the State of his domicile some control over the debt which he owes. It can, for example, levy a tax on its transfer by will (Blackstone v. Miller, 188 U. S. 189; State Tax Comm'n v. Aldrich, 316 U. S. 174, 176-177), appropriate it through garnishment or attachment (Chicago, R. I. & P. R. Co. v. Sturm, 174 U. S. 710; see Harris v. Balk, 198 U. S. 215), collect it and administer it for the benefit of creditors. Clark v. Williard, 294 U. S. 211; Fischer v. American United Ins. Co., 314 U. S. 549, 553. But we are aware of no power which the State of domicile of the debtor has to determine the personal rights of the creditor in the intangible unless the creditor has been personally served or appears in the proceeding. The existence of any such power has been repeatedly denied. Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U. S. 714; Hart v. Sansom, 110 U. S. 151; New York Life Ins. Co. v. Dunlevy, 241 U. S. 518. We know of no source of power which would take the present case out of that category. The Nevada decree that is said to wipe out respondent's claim for alimony under the New York judgment is nothing less than an attempt by Nevada to restrain respondent from asserting And see Miller v. Miller, 200 Iowa 1193, 206 N. W. 262. 541 FRANKFURTER, J., dissenting. her claim under that judgment. That is an attempt to exercise an in personam jurisdiction over a person not before the court. That may not be done. Since Nevada had no power to adjudicate respondent's rights in the New York judgment, New York need not give full faith and credit to that phase of Nevada's judgment. A judgment. of a court having no jurisdiction to render it is not entitled to the full faith and credit which the Constitution and statute of the United States demand. Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U. S. 32, 40-41; Williams v. North Carolina, 325 U. S. 226, 229, and cases cited. The result in this situation is to make the divorce divisible to give effect to the Nevada decree insofar as it affects marital status and to make it ineffective on the issue of alimony. It accommodates the interests of both Nevada and New York in this broken marriage by restricting each State to the matters of her dominant concern. Since Nevada had no jurisdiction to alter respondent's rights in the New York judgment, we do not reach the further question whether in any event that judgment would be entitled to full faith and credit in Nevada. See Sistare v. Sistare, 218 U. S. 1; Barber v. Barber, 323 U. S. 77; Griffin v. Griffin, 327 U. S. 220. And it will be time enough to consider the effect of any discrimination shown to out-of-state ex parte divorces when a State makes that its policy. MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER, dissenting. Affirmed. The Court's opinion appears to rest on three independent grounds: (1) New York may, consistently with the Full Faith and Credit Clause, hold that a prior separate maintenance decree of one of its courts survives a decree of divorce within the scope of enforceability of the rule in Williams |