Learn Law For All

UCCJEA - Navigating the Judicial Nuances in Child Custody Cases

• Launi Sheldon and Guests

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Embark on a journey to mastery over the legal labyrinth of child custody with Arizona's own Dan Riley, a family law specialist with a knack for clarifying the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Enforcement Act (UCCJEA). This episode promises to guide you through the maze of jurisdictional issues, spotlighting how a child's six-month residency can tip the scales in initial custody battles. As Dan shares his insights, you'll gain a deeper understanding of the strategic moves and counter-moves played out in family courtrooms across the country. Whether you're a seasoned attorney or a curious newcomer, our conversation with Dan will equip you with the knowledge to navigate these complex legal waters with confidence.

Tune in for a rare opportunity to hear Dan dissect the UCCJEA using hypothetical scenarios that bring the statute's convolutions to life. His expert commentary illuminates the judges' varying approaches, from the bustling dockets of urban courts to the more measured paces of rural benches. Through our engaging dialogue, we explore the personal nuances of family law as practiced in different locales, offering listeners a comprehensive tour of the judicial landscape. This episode is a must-listen for anyone eager to comprehend the underpinnings of child custody jurisdiction and the intelligent design behind family law strategy.

You can reach Dan Riley at:
https://rileyplc.com/

You can reach Launi Sheldon at:
Launi@LearnLawForAll.com

Launi:

Hi, I'm Launi with Learn Law For All. Today we're going to be talking about the UCC-JEA with Dan Riley. Now, dan Riley is a board certified specialist in family law in Arizona and a certified quadro professional, which again, I think is amazing, Dan, you and I talked about this before. It not only allows one specialist, but because the certification for quadro is a national thing, he's able to get both. That's a really rare. It's really rare to have both of those. I really appreciate you being here and sharing your expertise with us. It's primary practice area involves valuations and division of retirement assets, but he also does family law and appeals. So welcome, dan, I appreciate you being here.

Dan:

Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure talking to you, Launi.

Launi:

So, as a reminder, watching this video or listening to this podcast is not creating an attorney client privilege or an attorney client relationship. We're both only in Arizona and so this podcast is strictly for informational and entertainment purposes only. So Dan and I are only licensed in Arizona. Dan has done expert opinion work on quadro. Because that is a national thing, the rules are kind of all the same, so we can reach out to him for that also. So again, dan, thank you so much for being here.

Dan:

Oh, you're very welcome.

Launi:

So Dan and I just did a CLE on the UCCJA, which was really interesting. He made something that is so not interesting, Interesting. That's a hard. That's a hard statute. It's long and boring and you really made it learnable. So thank you for that.

Dan:

Oh yeah, it was a pleasure.

Launi:

So we're just going to do a couple of questions here, maybe three, because when we were doing the CLE, you talked about these paths of getting your state to be the home state and you said there were like four paths but maybe a fifth and I think that was the emergency, temporary. So can you talk about those paths?

Dan:

Yeah, so the UCCJA. It's an acronym, it stands for Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Enforcement Act. It's a model law that 49 of the 50 states have on the books to try to create a uniform system for figuring out how do we determine what state is going to exercise jurisdiction in a parenting case, and so it offers multiple different paths to jurisdiction. The first is going to be what's called the initial child custody determination, and that's exactly what it sounds like. Initial means it's the first parenting plan. You're not modifying an existing parenting plan, you're trying to get one set up for the first time. So what state is responsible for that? It's going to be the child's home state, and the act defines a home state as being the state in which a child has lived for at least the six months prior to the filing of the petition, or a state that was a home state at any point in the last six months before the filing of the petition. So that sounds really convoluted. So, in plain English, what that means is you look at the last 12 months and you go. Okay, I filed my petition on December 31st, so I'm going to go back six months. Was the child in that state for the last six months.

Dan:

And if the answer is yes, that's a really simple one. Yeah, okay, I'm in the home state Great. But if you've only been in that state for the last four months, then you're going to ask okay, where was the child living before that? And a lot of people look at it the wrong way and think, okay, well, if I was in this state for four months, then out of the last six months, that's the place we live the longest, so that's the home state. And that's not actually how the act works. You're going to look at what state they were in before and then were they in that state for six months? Because, if so, that's going to be the child's home state. So you can think of it like, once a child has a home state that lags for six months, so you've got to stay somewhere for six months to change that jurisdiction, so that the new state is going to be the home state.

Launi:

So that's an initial jurisdiction. So I have a couple more questions that I didn't talk to you about and I didn't bring them up in the in the other recording, the CLE. But I do have two questions. One are states kind of possessive with their cases or are they all right letting them go?

Dan:

I find that it depends on the jurisdiction. So if you're here in where I practice mostly in Maricopa County, which is a major metro area where judges have caseloads of hundreds of cases if they've got a gray area where they can send that case off to another jurisdiction, is there probably gonna be a motivation to err on the side of sending it off their books Probably judges or human beings like the rest of us, and if they have the opportunity to take a case off their books, they may be a little inclined to do that. I find that rural judges are not quite as busy and are more inclined to keep jurisdiction, and I'm happy to handle cases in rural courts because you tend to get a lot more time. They'll give you a full day trial in a Mojave County, whereas you're lucky to get two hours in Maricopa County.

Launi:

Yeah, I had a two day trial in Mojave County and I loved it. The judge was very thoughtful in it, yeah, and they. I mean it was a really good. The decision was hysterical we'll have to talk about one day, but it was a really interesting case. I was a little concerned that I would have been hometown or schooled, because I'm from the big city and they're the little town.

Dan:

Right.

Launi:

But I didn't find that at all. The judge was very thoughtful. Have you found that?

Dan:

Yeah, I love handling cases in other counties, especially now that everything is remote anyway and you're not having to drive, Although in a way I kind of missed that. I like those hours on the road listening to an audio book or just listening to music and being paid to do it.

Launi:

Yeah, yeah, no, kidding, right, I had one client who flew me up there. So I my client had a friend who was a pilot and that pilot like a little twin engine thing and picked me up in the morning, flew me out there. They had a car waiting for us and my client was already out there. She lived out there and I think the first time I took like a taxi or something. The second time maybe she came and got me or something. But yeah, that was fun, I felt like a big lawyer. Okay, this was another one that I was gonna ask you, but I forgot to ask you also in the CLE. You know, in Arizona sometimes getting any kind of hearing can take like even what temporary orders? Hearings can take three months, even though they're supposed to take 30 days.

Dan:

Yeah.

Launi:

So do those hearings take a long time? And then, if they do, does that go towards the amount of time that the kid lives here? Is it the time at the filing?

Dan:

So the Act says it's specifically based on the data filing, Okay, but the judges are human beings and if it takes six months for a case to get to a hearing and the court's supposed to look at all the facts and circumstances if determining, you know if it's an inconvenient forum or whether it's a temporary absence issue. I've seen appellate decisions where they where they mention offhand, by the time of the hearing, the child had been in the state for eight months. So I think technically they're not supposed to, but in reality it's clear that they do.

Launi:

Right, and that you know that happens to us with custody also right, Because you're not supposed to file for a year, Right, Unless there's like an emergency or something and you get all kinds of people that'll file at seven or eight months because they're not going to get the hearing for another four months and by then it's been long enough that they can, you know, four or five months they can get in there, and sometimes ours take, you know, eight months to finally get down to the real hearing. So okay, I was just curious if you'd noticed anything like that. So, all right. So another question I had that we did discuss was what are the two schools of thought for the court accepting jurisdiction?

Dan:

So that that home state? Yeah, that, so that home state jurisdiction question. That gets complicated in cases where you've got. So, for example, I had an appeal where mom had taken the kids to the state of Wisconsin to enroll them in a Christian summer camp and the understanding was she was going to be bringing the kids back at the end of the summer and then there were communications between the parents where she was indicating that she was still coming back, but she wanted dad to do some counseling and eventually this morphed into I'm not coming back. And so there was a question about, well, how much of that trip was considered a temporary absence. Because the statute says you, when you're figuring out what a home state is, you include any period of temporary absence. So you know, let's say you've lived in Wyoming for four months and then you take a week long trip to Disneyland and you come back and you live another three months. That trip to Disneyland doesn't reset the six months time period.

Dan:

But you can see where it gets really hard to interpret in cases like this one that I'm talking about, where mom takes the kids out of state for what's supposed to be the summer and then slowly over time, the communication morphs into I'm not coming back to to Arizona and so there are two schools of thought about that. One is some states apply just a bright line test. We don't care about the facts and the circumstances, we don't care what the communications were, the intent of the party, we are just counting days and if the kids have been in this state for six months or more, we're the home state. We don't look at anything else. Other states are applying what's called a totality of a circumstances test, where they want to know about the circumstances. You know, wait a minute. Why did the kids come to Wisconsin? What were the communications? When would a reasonable person have thought that this was no longer a summer trip and was now something more? Those are the two schools of thought bright line test or totality the circumstances test.

Launi:

Okay, and so you know we get these often right. Arizona has a lot of people moving here and I think that's the same. You know there are other places with a lot of people moving there and oftentimes they have kids. So this is kind of a really crazy situation that can happen. And really trying to get the court to hear your case when there's orders from another state you know it can be difficult. It's not an easy task. So you know there are things to do. There are ways to do it.

Launi:

We did just do a CLE on it. So if you're planning on that or if you're a lawyer, you know getting people to, if someone's coming to you as a lawyer and having asking them to help you get the case transferred here, again, we did the CLE. Dan talks about everything great, walked you right through what you need to do in case of a conference and or a hearing, and he goes through the pertinent case law, which I love. It's fairly very helpful. So, dan, thank you so much for being here. Do you have anything else you'd want to? You know, talk about with that. Is there anything?

Dan:

I know we talked about so much in both instances, but yeah, there's too much to cover, but yeah, I think we went over it in a pretty systematic way. In the CLE we use a lot of hypotheticals and examples, because that's really the best way to understand a complicated statute like the UCCJEA.

Launi:

That's true. He did use a ton of hypotheticals in there. So, again, super easy to learn from. It really made it understandable. And then he gave his you know thoughts on what would happen under those examples. So I really appreciate that, because those are great. All right, dan. So thank you so much for being here. We'll talk again.

Dan:

You're welcome. It was a pleasure talking to you.