In re Marriage of Kimura
Supreme Court of Iowa
471 N.W.2d 869 (1991)
Dr. Ken Kimura (plaintiff) and Fumi Kimura (defendant), both Japanese citizens, married in Japan in 1965 and stopped living together in 1973; they have two adult children. Dr. Kimura eventually gained permanent U.S. residency and was hired as a surgeon and professor at the University of Iowa, filing for divorce there in December 1988 after roughly a year of Iowa residency. Notice was mailed to Mrs. Kimura in Japan and published in an Iowa newspaper. Mrs. Kimura challenged both personal and subject-matter jurisdiction; after a hearing where her lawyer appeared but she did not, the district court granted the divorce, and she appealed, arguing Iowa had no business dissolving a marriage between two Japanese citizens where she had never even entered the state.
Whether an Iowa court may dissolve the marriage of a couple where the petitioning husband has lived and worked in Iowa for just over a year and the wife still resides in Japan and has never entered Iowa.