Full Opinion

Opinion issued August 31, 2026 In The Court of Appeals For The First District of Texas ——————————— NO. 01-24-00497-CV ——————————— EVANGELINA LOPEZ GUZMAN ZARAGOZA, Appellant V. MIGUEL ZARAGOZA FUENTES, Appellee On Appeal from the 245th District Court Harris County, Texas Trial Court Case No. 2014-30215 CONCURRING OPINION We’re 12 years, 10 mandamus petitions, and 4 appeals into this divorce case and we still don’t know if these nonagenarians are married. I join the Court’s opinion because the trial court’s comity decision fell within the leeway given a trial court’s discretion. But I write separately to suggest an approach on remand that could— depending on the facts developed—get this case out of the doldrums and sailing toward a resolution. Rule 308b is the Texas procedure for recognizing foreign judgments. As the Court today notes, one of the substantive issues at a Rule 308b hearing is whether the foreign judgment was obtained in a manner that is consistent with American notions of due process. Both in its comments at the motion to dismiss hearing and in its conclusions of law the trial court here stated a belief that a Rule 308b hearing would look at whether the Mexican divorce decree at issue was obtained consistent with Mexican law. Were that the case, the trial court would have been indisputably correct in stating it was “necessary” to wait for the Mexican proceedings to resolve. But because a Rule 308b hearing will look at the application of American law to past facts, a resolution of the Mexican proceedings is not necessarily helpful to a 308b analysis. The Mexican courts are unlikely to weigh in on whether a Mexican divorce decree was obtained in a manner that comported with American law. The proceedings involve the same litigants so they can bring in the same evidence here they’re using in the Mexican courts. Indeed, at this point the litigation in Mexico is no longer about the divorce itself but seems to be about whether Evangelina’s purported lawyer had authority to settle a challenge to the Mexican divorce in a Mexican court. The answer to that 2 question will not affect a Rule 308b analysis. In fact, it would likely take multiple rounds of litigation in Mexico to get an answer that would impact this case. It’s altogether possible the Mexican litigation will leave the divorce decree in place but provide no helpful input to a Texas court; if the Mexican courts determine Evangelina’s purported lawyer had authority to settle the case, or that she procedurally defaulted her claims in some way, that would not inform an analysis into whether the 1959 decree comports with American due process. Considering that the Mexican litigation has gone on for over a decade with no end in sight, the prospects of help from the south are dim. Rather than waiting on a ship that may never come in, or which may arrive with an empty hold, the trial court here can just have a Rule 308b hearing now. If the evidence at the hearing shows the Mexican divorce did not comport with American due process, then the results of the Mexican litigation do not matter here and this case can proceed to trial. If the evidence shows the Mexican divorce comports with American due process and is otherwise admissible, then we’d be back to waiting for the results of the Mexican litigation, but we’d be no worse off than where we are now. I think having the hearing now is the best available option, but I cannot say the trial court abused its discretion. The test our Court has adopted for international comity has many fact-based factors all in pursuit of “reasonableness.” As the Court 3 today notes, applying abuse-of-discretion review to this decision “is a reasonableness analysis layered on a reasonable analysis.” It would be an extraordinary situation where such a ruling was an abuse of discretion.* So while we cannot order the trial court to hold a Rule 308b hearing, I urge it to do so on remand. Without prejudging the result of such a hearing, it is the only course that might lead to a trial in the foreseeable future. Clint Morgan Justice Panel consists of Justices Gunn, Caughey, and Morgan. Morgan, J., concurring. * Of course this Court held the trial court abused its discretion on a comity ruling in Acain v. International Plant Services, LLC, 449 S.W.3d 655 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 2014, pet. denied). In that case we adopted our current test for international comity and announced that comity rulings were subject to abuse-of- discretion review. Id. at 659. Under that standard, a trial court’s ruling is given deference and generally affirmed if there is some evidence supporting it, even if the evidence is mixed. But in Acain, we acknowledged the evidence was mixed on the various factors then reversed the trial court’s comity decision because, we said, the opposite decision was “not unreasonable.” Id. at 664-65. That does not sound like abuse-of-discretion review to me, it sounds like a standard that would almost never affirm a trial court’s comity decision. I approve of the Court’s decision today to take a “do as they said, not as they did” approach to Acain. 4