Domestic Relations: Divorce Across the Border

For 14 months, thousands of New Yorkers have nervously pondered a personal though international question: Is a Mexican divorce valid? In the now famous case of Rosenstiel v. Rosenstiel, a state court last year answered with a shattering no—thus endangering all New Yorkers who remarried after getting Mexican divorces. Last week the state's highest court saved those marriages by upholding the divorces—and raising new questions about the legal mess that drives New Yorkers to Mexico in the first place.

By virtue of laws going back 178 years, New York is the only state that recognizes...