Daelte ST. DENIS-LIMA
v.
Thomas J. ST. DENIS
Argued
October 10, 2018
Appeal
from the Superior Court in the judicial district of
Stamford-Norwalk, Hon. Michael E. Shay,
judge trial referee,
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[Copyrighted Material Omitted]
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Brittany Bussola Paz, New Haven, for the appellant
(plaintiff).
Heather M. Brown-Olsen, for the appellee (defendant).
Alvord,
Prescott and Flynn, Js.
OPINION
FLYNN,
J.
[190
Conn.App. 297] The plaintiff, Daelte St. Denis-Lima, appeals
from the judgment of the trial court, rendered following the
courts granting of the motion to dismiss that had been filed
by the defendant, Thomas J. St. Denis. The plaintiff claims
that (1) the court improperly [190 Conn.App. 298] denied her
request for an evidentiary hearing on the issue of subject
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matter jurisdiction, (2) the courts finding of a final
judgment of dissolution in the country of Brazil was clearly
erroneous, and, alternatively (3) even if Brazil issued a
final judgment of dissolution, that judgment should not be
recognized under the principle of comity. We disagree with
the plaintiffs claims and affirm the judgment of the court.
The
following facts are relevant on appeal. The parties were
married on October 20, 2004, in Lenox, Massachusetts. They
are parents of two minor children. A previous action for
dissolution of marriage had been filed by the plaintiff in
the judicial district of Fairfield, which was dismissed by
the court on May 19, 2015, for want of subject matter
jurisdiction because both the plaintiff and the defendant had
testified that they were residents of Brazil; thus, neither
party then satisfied the residency requirement of General
Statutes § 46b-44 (a)[1] sufficient to confer jurisdiction on
the Connecticut Superior Court. See Lima-St. Denis v. St.
Denis, Docket No. FA- 14-4048088, 2015 WL 3652095, 2015
LEXIS 1174 (Conn. Super. May 19, 2015). The plaintiff
commenced the operative dissolution of marriage action on
December 30, 2015, claiming that "[o]ne of the parties
to the marriage has been a resident of the state of
Connecticut for at least twelve months next preceding the
date of the filing of the complaint or next [preceding] the
date of the decree, or one of the parties was domiciled in
this state at the time of the marriage and returned to [this]
state with the intention of permanently remaining before the
filing [190 Conn.App. 299] of the complaint." On
February 16, 2016, the defendant filed a motion to dismiss
the plaintiffs dissolution action on six grounds: (1) lack
of subject matter jurisdiction; (2) lack of personal
jurisdiction; (3) improper venue; (4) insufficiency of
process; (5) insufficiency of service of process; and (6)
comity law precluding the action in Connecticut.
On May
16, 2016, while the defendants motion to dismiss was pending
in the present case, the marriage of the parties was
dissolved by a decree of divorce entered by a court of
competent jurisdiction in Brazil, as a prior dissolution
proceeding had been pending there since February, 2015. This
decree was registered in Brazil as a final decree on July 6,
2016. On April 10, 2017, the defendant in this case, Thomas
J. St. Denis,[2] registered with the
court[3] a copy of that same final decree from
Brazil. The registered decree contained a decision issued by
a Brazilian court on May 16, 2016, which concludes with a
decree that "the divorce of the couple Thomas Joseph St.
Denis and Daelte Lima St. Denis so it reach its full legal
effects." A status conference was held before the court
on March 6, 2017, in which the plaintiff and her trial
counsel, Attorney Allen A. Currier, were present. At the
status conference, the plaintiffs counsel acknowledged that
the defendants counsel had filed affidavits stating that the
parties marriage already had been dissolved by a decree in
Brazil.
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Despite not filing a counteraffidavit, the plaintiffs
counsel, nevertheless, represented to the court that the
conclusions in the affidavit were in dispute. Neither party
requested an evidentiary hearing at that time.
On
April 21, 2017, the court heard oral argument on the
defendants motion to dismiss, but it declined the [190
Conn.App. 300] plaintiffs request for an evidentiary hearing
made on that day, wherein the plaintiff intended to proffer
an expert witness, the plaintiffs lawyer in the Brazilian
dissolution proceedings, who would contest the validity of
the documents submitted by the defendant and claim that the
parties already were divorced in Brazil. The following
...