North Carolina, where Nevada's finding of domicile was not questioned though the other spouse had neither appeared nor been served with process in Nevada and though recognition of such a divorce offended the policy of North Carolina.” The ruling: both Mr. Williams and Ms. Hendrix were “convicted of bigamous cohabitation” and were sentenced to a term of years in a state prison. Subsequent developments Once the decision was made in the Williams et al. v. State of North Carolina trial, the ruling stood for two years before being called back to trial in 1944 to reexamine the decision. “The record from the 1942 trial did not present the question whether North Carolina had the power to refuse full faith and credit to Nevada divorce decrees because, contrary to the findings of the Nevada court, North Carolina finds that no bona fide domicile was acquired in Nevada.” The Supreme Court ruled that, “The Nevada divorces were valid, and must be given full faith and credit by North Carolina, if the travelers really were domiciled in Nevada when they received their divorces. However, domicile was a jurisdictional requirement for the Nevada courts; North Carolina might constitutionally retry the issue of the previous Nevada domicile, and, if its courts found that domicile lacking, might punish its straying residents.” This solution soon fell apart. The court met in 1948 and decided that if both husband and wife appeared in the Nevada proceedings then neither could later challenge the divorce by way of ‘collateral attack.’ This also meant that a third party could not attack the judgment. Since the Williams et al. v. State of North Carolina case from 1942, American law in this area has changed in two distinct but related ways. “First, all 50 states (as of 1985) now permit the dissolution of marriage on at least one ‘no fault’ ground. Second, in a variety of contexts the Supreme Court has recognized not only a constitutional right to marry but a broad freedom of intimate association.” It is unlikely that a state would go to such great lengths to preserve a marriage against the will of one spouse and that the trial would be given the same weight today that it was given in the 1940s. References External links 1942 in United States case law United States Supreme Court cases of the Stone Court 1942 in North Carolina Legal history of North Carolina