In all of the southern and southwestern states, except Louisiana and, of course, South Carolina, a short term of residence is required to qualify the plaintiff to bring suit. Virginia began with a fairly cautious act in 1848. A definite term is not fixed; but a petition for divorce must be brought in the court of the county, city, or town where one of the parties lives, and when the plaintiff has left the county or other place where the married persons dwelt together, the "suit shall be instituted and heard in the court" held for that same county, if the defendant lives there still. The benefits of the act do not extend to any save _bona fide_ citizens at the time of petition; nor to any case where the parties have never lived together as citizens and as married persons in the commonwealth; nor to any cause of adultery which shall have occurred in any other state or country, unless the parties at the time of such cause or before it took place were citizens of the state and lived there together as husband and wife.[298] By the present law no suit can be sustained unless one of the persons has been domiciled in the state for at least one year before; and it must be brought either in the county or corporation where the parties last cohabited, or, at the option of the plaintiff, in that of the defendant, if still a resident of the state; otherwise in the place where the plaintiff dwells.[299] [298] Act of March 18: _Acts of the Assembly_ (1847-48), 165, 166. [299] _Code of Va._ (1887), 561.