The question of interstate jurisdiction in family matters has been for the most part settled by statutory law. The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws suggested and created the legislation which came to be called the Uniform Child Custody and Jurisdiction Enforcement Act. The law was drafted in 1997 and became effective in Pennsylvania in 2004. One of the main purposes of the UCCJEA was to clarify the exclusive, continuing jurisdiction for the state that entered the child custody decree. The UCCJEA provides, in relevant part, that: Except as otherwise provided in section 5424 (relating to temporary emergency jurisdiction), a court of this Commonwealth may not modify a child custody determination made by a court of another state unless a court of this Commonwealth has jurisdiction to make an initial determination under section 5421(a)(1) or (2) (relating to initial child custody jurisdiction) and: (1) the court of the other state determines it no longer has exclusive, continuing jurisdiction under section 5422 (relating to exclusive, continuing jurisdiction) or that a court of this Commonwealth would be a more convenient forum under section 5427 (relating to inconvenient forum); or (2) a court of this Commonwealth or a court of the other state determines that the child, the child’s parents and any person acting as a parent do not presently reside in the other state.
In V.C. v. L.P., 2018 Pa. Super. LEXIS 82, *7-8, 2018 PA Super 21 the two parties who had the child were not married. The maternal grandmother filed a petition in New York in 2010 seeking custody and a final custody order was issued by the New York Court in 2012 and another order in 2016. Interestingly the mother lived in New York, the Father lived in Hawaii and the grandmother lived in Pennsylvania.
The Mother in 2017 filed a Petition in Pennsylvania asking the Pennsylvania Court to modify the New York custody order. The mother was at the time a resident of New York and the Grandmother was a resident of Pennsylvania and had custody of the child. After the filing the New York Court informed the Pennsylvania trial Court that the New York Court retained jurisdiction. The New York Court requested a conference which the Pennsylvania Trial Court which the Trial Court refused to attend.
On April 10, 2017, the Trial Court issued an interim custody order. The Maternal Grandmother moved to dismiss Mother’s custody complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. In May of 2017, the trial court denied Maternal Grandmother’s dismissal motion. In June 2017, the trial court found Maternal Grandmother in contempt of the April 10, 2017 order and imposed a $5,000.00 sanction.
Thereafter, Maternal Grandmother filed a timely notice of appeal and this Court quashed all portions of the appeal other than the challenge to the trial court’s contempt order. The New York court explicitly declined to find that it lacked exclusive, continuing jurisdiction over the parties’ child custody dispute or that Pennsylvania would be a more convenient forum. Moreover, as Mother still lives in New York, the trial court could not exercise jurisdiction under section 5423(2). Accordingly, the trial court lacked subject matter jurisdiction under section 5423. As the trial court also could not exercise jurisdiction under section 5424, it lacked subject matter jurisdiction to modify the New York court’s child custody order. The Court thereafter quashed the actions of the Pennsylvania Court.
So, the bottom line here is that if another state, principality or commonwealth has jurisdiction of a case – which is determined by the first Court to issue a custody determination or order, that state must agree to relinquish jurisdiction in order to transfer jurisdiction to another state’s court.