Arkansas Case Deals With UCCJEA Issues
The Arkansas Court of Appeals, in Weesner v. Johnson, Ark. Ct. App., No. 04-784, 1/19/05) ruled that the trial court erred as a matter of law in assuming jurisdiction over the custody aspect of a divorce case where the parties' child had never lived in Arkansas.
At trial, the resident father, who had requested custody in his divorce petition, acknowledged that the child had been born and resided in California, and said that the mother and child had also lived in Arizona and Nevada for brief periods. The mother, however, moved for a dismissal of the custody matter and submitted an affidavit maintaining that while she and the child had moved around the state, they had always resided in California. (The parties had separated prior to the child's birth in 2001.) The trial court held that it had custody jurisdiction over the parties and the subject matter.
Looking to the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act, the Court of Appeals held that Arkansas clearly did not have home state jurisdiction because the child had never lived there. Likewise, the Court continued, the father could not rely on significant connection jurisdiction, because the child had absolutely none with Arkansas. Further finding that this case did not present the situation in which another state declines jurisdiction, the Court also rejected the father's reliance on the UCCJEA provision under which Arkansas retains jurisdiction if no court of any other state would have jurisdiction pointing out that if nothing else, California had significant connection jurisdiction due to the likelihood that substantial evidence existed there regarding the child's well being. "Because the child had no connection with the State of Arkansas and the only way Arkansas could exercise jurisdiction would be if the child had no home state or no significant connections with another state, we hold that the trial court erred as a matter of law in assuming jurisdiction over the child-custody determinations in this case," the Court concluded.
