National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws

211 E. Ontario St., Suite 1300, Chicago, IL 60611
tel 312-915-0195, fax 312-915-0187

For Immediate Release

UNIFORM STATE LAW HELPS ENFORCE CHILD CUSTODY ORDERS
Enactment Nationwide Crucial to Effectiveness

January 2000 - Important new legislation, part of the continuing effort to stem the epidemic of child kidnapping by warring parents, has been enacted in 15 states and has been introduced in three additional state legislatures. Uniform enactment nationwide is crucial to its effectiveness.

The Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act (UCCJEA), promulgated by the Uniform Law Commissioners in 1997, is a revision of the 1968 Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act (UCCJA), which was adopted in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. UCCJA was designed to prevent a fairly common legal standoff of the day, whereby one parent gained legal custody of a child in one state, and the other parent managed to take the child to a "haven state" in search of a court willing to change the initial lawful custody order.

Among the obstacles enabling parents to obtain conflicting custody orders from courts in different states has been a lack of uniformity in state enactments of the UCCJA and almost 30 years of inconsistent court interpretations. In addition, the revision was necessary to bring the act into compliance with federal statutes such as the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act (PKPA) and the Violence Against Women Act.

The new Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act significantly eliminates the conflicts and problems which surround interstate custody and visitation cases and, most importantly, includes a provisions for enforcing interstate custody orders, an issue the original UCCJA did not address. The enforcement provisions are aimed at the continuing problems of child abduction, concealment and evasion when parents and families are at war with each other.

The original act authorized four different bases for jurisdiction, and did not provide for home state priority. Like the federal law, the new act prioritizes home state jurisdiction, defining it as the state in which a child lived with a parent, or a person acting as parent, for at least six consecutive months immediately before the beginning of a child custody proceeding. If there is more than one child custody order, therefore, the order from the child's home state is the one that is enforced.

The new act further provides that a state which makes the initial custody determination has continuing exclusive jurisdiction, so long as a party to the original custody determination remains in that state. Continuing exclusive jurisdiction was not a provision in the original UCCJA, although the federal PKPA later recognized the concept. Under the new act, a state with continuing exclusive jurisdiction is the only state in which a custody order can be modified. If that state determines that another state has a more significant connection to the child, it may relinquish its authority.

UCCJEA also clarifies how and when emergency jurisdiction should be used, allowing a court to take temporary jurisdiction even if it not the home state. A court may make such an emergency determination if the child is present in the state and has been abandoned, or is subjected to or threatened with mistreatment or abuse. This provision also extends the emergency jurisdiction provision of the older UCCJA to include abuse of a parent or sibling of an abducted child.

New to the UCCJEA is an expedited process to enforce interstate child custody and visitation orders. As documented in an extensive study by the American Bar Association's Center on Children and the Law, Obstacles to the Recovery and Return of Parentally Abducted Children (1993), neither the UCCJA nor the PKPA provides for enforcement of child custody orders. It was assumed that local law would be adequate for enforcement of out-of-state orders. Time has proved the error of that assumption.

Drafters of the new act recognized the need for swift enforcement for a left-behind parent who seeks to have a child custody order enforced and chose an extremely swift remedy. If enforcement does not happen quickly, the child may be lost permanently. At an enforcement hearing, a petitioner only needs to show a certified copy of the custody determination to be enforced, evidence of a violation by the respondent, and ask for thee relief sought. The court will then decide whether the relief sought should be granted.
If the enforcing court is concerned that the parent who has physical custody of the child will flee or harm the child, it is empowered by the act to issue a warrant to take physical possession of the child. The UCCJEA establishes procedures to protect children and parties in cases involving domestic violence, while creating clear rules to determine which court has jurisdiction over custody and visitation cases.

In this and other respects, the act accomplishes for custody and visitation determinations the same certainty that has occurred in interstate child support law with the promulgation of the 1994 Uniform Interstate Family Support Act, now the law in every jurisdiction.
The UCCJEA has been adopted in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee and Texas.

The ULC, officially known as the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, is now in its 109th year. The organization comprises more than 300 lawyers, judges, and law professors, appointed by the states as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, to draft proposals for uniform and model laws and work toward their enactment in their legislatures. Since its inception in 1892, the group has promulgated more than 200 acts, among them such bulwarks of state statutory law as the Uniform Commercial Code, the Uniform Probate Code, and the Uniform Partnership Act.

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