Georgia courts decide whether an out-of-state spouse has the required minimum contacts by running a three-part test.
The Three Parts
In Ennis v. Ennis, 290 Ga. 890 (2012), the Georgia Supreme Court said that it “has set forth a three-part test for ‘minimum contacts’ needed to confer personal jurisdiction over a nonresident.” Drawing on Smith v. Smith, 254 Ga. 450 (1985), the test requires that: (1) “the nonresident must purposefully avail herself of the privilege of doing some act or consummating some transaction with or in the forum”; (2) “the plaintiff must have a legal cause of action against the nonresident that arises out of activities of the defendant within the forum”; and (3) if the first two are met, “the assumption of jurisdiction must be found to be consonant with the due process notions of ‘fair play’ and ‘substantial justice.’”
The first two ask whether the contacts exist. The third asks whether using them would be reasonable.
Failing the First Two Parts
In Ennis itself, the wife had lived in Georgia for about eighteen months in the 1980s and again from 1996 to 2003. The couple then moved to Virginia, where they separated and where she stayed. She had visited Georgia twice since. The court held there were not sufficient contacts for her to “reasonably anticipate being haled into court” here, so the trial court should have dismissed the claims for alimony, property division, and attorney fees.
Failing Only the Third
A spouse can also lose the third part alone. In Popple v. Popple, 257 Ga. 98 (1987), the couple lived in Georgia from 1953 to 1967 and the separation happened here, but the husband had been gone nearly twenty years. Assuming the first two parts were met, the court found his connection “sufficiently attenuated” that due process “would be offended.”
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