NOTICE: NOT FOR OFFICIAL PUBLICATION.

UNDER ARIZONA RULE OF THE SUPREME COURT 111(c), THIS DECISION IS NOT PRECEDENTIAL

AND MAY BE CITED ONLY AS AUTHORIZED BY RULE.

IN THE

ARIZONA COURT OF APPEALS

DIVISION ONE

In re the Marriage of:

RAKESH NATARAJAN, Petitioner/Appellant,

v.

MEGALA NATARAJAN, Respondent/Appellee.

Nos. 1 CA-CV 20-0440 FC, 1 CA-CV 20-0541 FC

(Consolidated)

Appeal from the Superior Court in Maricopa County

Nos. FC2020-050970, FC2019-055788

The Honorable Alison Bachus, Judge

AFFIRMED

COUNSEL

Rakesh Natarajan, London, England

Petitioner/Appellant

Megala Natarajan, Tamil Nadu, India

Respondent/Appellee

FILED 3-22-2022
NATARAJAN v. NATARAJAN

Decision of the Court

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MEMORANDUM DECISION

Presiding Judge Peter B. Swann delivered the decision of the court, in which 

Judge David D. Weinzweig and Judge Paul J. McMurdie joined.

S W A N N, Judge:

¶1 Rakesh Natarajan (“Father”) appeals from the superior 

court’s dismissal of his Petition for Dissolution of Marriage. Because the 

court correctly determined Father is not domiciled in Arizona, we affirm.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

¶2 Megala Natarajan (“Mother”) and Father are both Indian 

citizens who married in India on February 15, 2013. On April 19, 2013,

Father moved to Arizona to join Mother, who had been working in Phoenix 

since 2008. Mother had been in Phoenix on a temporary L1-B work visa. 

Father held a dependent visa that allowed spouses of L1-B visa holders to 

live and work in the United States. The parties had a child in 2014.

¶3 Mother’s L1-B non-immigrant visa expired on August 27, 

2017. Two days earlier, the family traveled to India to attend a wedding.

Before leaving Arizona, Mother and Father applied for H1-B visas and 

awaited their lottery results. About two weeks after leaving Arizona, 

Father traveled to the United Kingdom for work. He returned to India in 

late October 2017 to reunite with Mother and the child.

¶4 Mother’s petition for an H1-B visa was approved on October 

18, 2017. Father’s H1-B dependent visa was approved on November 16, 

2017. On November 18, 2017, the parties contacted their Arizona apartment 

lease agent to renew the lease on their Arizona apartment for an additional 

year. The parties also purchased tickets for a return flight to Arizona 

scheduled for December 11, 2017.

¶5 Instead of returning to Arizona, the parties separated. The 

child remained in India with Mother and maternal grandparents. Father 

left India to work remotely from his company’s main office in the United 

Kingdom. He returned to India in May 2018, where he remained until 

flying to Arizona on October 1, 2018, to empty the couple’s storage unit.

Father then returned to the United Kingdom, where he resided through the 

filing of this appeal.
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¶6 On April 24, 2019, Mother allowed the child to travel to the 

United Kingdom to visit her father. Father then filed for a Child

Arrangement Order in the United Kingdom’s High Courts of Justice. In 

November 2019, that court ruled that India was the child’s habitual 

residence, not the United Kingdom or the United States. The child was 

returned to her mother in India, where they currently reside. Father 

remains in the United Kingdom, though he maintains that he intends to 

return to Phoenix in the future.

¶7 Father petitioned for determination of custody in the

Maricopa County Superior Court. The court determined that it lacked

jurisdiction to enter parenting orders while the parties were still married. 

Father then filed a Petition for Dissolution of Marriage in the Maricopa 

County Superior Court on February 14, 2020. The superior court granted 

Mother’s motion to dismiss, finding that Father had not maintained 

domicile in Arizona. Father appeals.

DISCUSSION

I. THE SUPERIOR COURT DID NOT HAVE JURISDICTION OVER 

FATHER’S DISSOLUTION PETITION.

¶8 Arizona courts have jurisdiction to enter dissolution decrees 

when “one of the parties, at the time the action was commenced, was 

domiciled in this state . . . for ninety days prior to filing the petition for 

dissolution of marriage.” A.R.S. § 25-312. Domicile requires both (1) 

physical presence and (2) an intent to remain for an indefinite period of 

time. Lake v. Bonham, 148 Ariz. 599, 601 (1986). Once a domicile is 

established, it is retained until replaced with another. Jizmejian v. Jizmejian, 

16 Ariz. App. 270, 273–74 (1972). The superior court held that Father 

abandoned his Arizona domicile in favor of the United Kingdom. Father’s 

intent to establish future domicile is a question of fact. Bialac v. Bialac, 95 

Ariz. 86, 87 (1963). But his residence for the 90 days preceding the filing of 

the petition is not subject to dispute. We will uphold the superior court’s 

decision so long as sufficient evidence supports its conclusion. Id. at 88. We 

review the evidence in the light most favorable to supporting the court’s 

decision. See Sommerfield v. Sommerfield, 121 Ariz. 575, 577 (1979).

¶9 “No general principle in the law of domicil is more firmly 

established than the basic rule that every person has at all times one 

domicil, and that no person has more than one domicil at a time.” Clark v. 

Clark, 71 Ariz. 194, 197 (1950) (citation omitted). Consequentially, Father 

cannot be domiciled in both the United Kingdom and Arizona. Father has 
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lived in the United Kingdom since 2018, working at his employer’s main 

office. “Domicile is presumed to follow residence . . . .” Jizmejian, 16 Ariz. 

App. at 273. The party contesting this presumption bears the burden of 

proof by a preponderance of the evidence. Id. at 273–74. Father claims he 

never abandoned his domicile in Arizona and that he intends to return to 

Phoenix. In support of this assertion, Father provided evidence that he and 

Mother renewed the lease on their Arizona apartment and bought plane 

tickets back to Phoenix while in India. At best, however, these actions only 

demonstrate the parties’ intent to return to Arizona in 2017, not at the time 

of filing.

¶10 Father also claims that he has items of personal property in 

the state, including bank accounts and a safe deposit box. In filings with 

the Royal High Courts of Justice, however, Father claimed he vacated the 

storage unit holding the family’s belongings, bringing personal items with 

him to London and giving the rest away to friends and charities. Father 

argues he was absent from Arizona because Mother “kidnapped the 

parties[’] child” and he intended to return to Arizona once the pandemic

resolved, no later than October 2020. In his 2019 filing with the Royal High 

Courts of Justice, however, Father stated that he “resides in the UK on a tier 

2 work visa” and “intends to remain here permanently.” After 

consideration of the facts, we determine that the superior court had 

sufficient evidence to find that Father abandoned his Arizona domicile.

II. THE SUPERIOR COURT DID NOT HAVE JURISDICTION TO 

MAKE INITIAL CHILD CUSTODY DETERMINATIONS.

¶11 Father’s petition for dissolution of marriage also asked the 

superior court to make legal decision-making, parenting time, and child 

support determinations concerning the parties’ minor child. Our subject 

matter jurisdiction in child custody proceedings is governed by A.R.S. § 25-

1031. Arizona courts have jurisdiction to make initial child custody 

determinations only if one of the following is true:

1. This state is the home state of the child on the date of the 

commencement of the proceeding, or was the home state of 

the child within six months before the commencement of the 

proceeding and the child is absent from this state but a parent 

or person acting as a parent continues to live in this state.

2. A court of another state does not have jurisdiction under 

paragraph 1 or a court of the home state of the child has 

declined to exercise jurisdiction on the ground that this state 
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is the more appropriate forum under § 25-1037 or 25-1038 and 

both of the following are true:

(a) The child and the child’s parents, or the child and 

at least one parent or a person acting as a parent, have 

a significant connection with this state other than mere 

physical presence.

(b) Substantial evidence is available in this state 

concerning the child’s care, protection, training and 

personal relationships.

3. All courts having jurisdiction under paragraph 1 or 2 have 

declined to exercise jurisdiction on the ground that a court of 

this state is the more appropriate forum to determine the 

custody of the child under § 25-1037 or 25-1038.

4. A court of any other state would not have jurisdiction under 

the criteria specified in paragraph 1, 2 or 3.

A.R.S. § 25-1031(A).

¶12 If a child is more than six months old, his or her home state is 

the “state in which a child lived with a parent or a person acting as a parent 

for at least six consecutive months immediately before the commencement 

of a child custody proceeding, including any period during which that 

person is temporarily absent from that state.” A.R.S. § 25-1002(7). Here, 

although the child was born in Arizona and lived here for the first three 

years of her life, neither she nor her parents have lived in Arizona since 

August 25, 2017. Consequentially, Arizona is not the child’s home state. 

¶13 When determining child custody jurisdiction, we treat foreign 

nations as though they are different states within our country. A.R.S. § 25-

1005(A). The child lived in India from late August 2017 to March 2019. In

March 2019, Mother sent the child to visit her father in the United Kingdom.

On December 2, 2019, Mother returned to India with the child. As the child

lived in India for the two and a half years immediately preceding Father’s 

filing, apart from a temporary absence, India is the child’s home state.

¶14 Father argues that the child’s absence from Arizona is due to

Mother’s “wrongful removal and retention.” In In re Marriage of Margain 

and Ruiz-Bours, Margain and Ruiz–Bours married in Mexico in 2007. 239 

Ariz. 369, 371, ¶ 2 (App. 2016). They moved to California where their child 

was born in 2008. Id. The family traveled to Mexico in 2010. Id. The parties 
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disputed the cause of the trip. Id. Ruiz–Bours and the child lived in Mexico

for nearly two years. Id. In 2011, Margain filed for divorce in Mexico; in 

2012, Ruiz-Bours left Mexico for Arizona. Id. at ¶¶ 3, 6. Following 

proceedings in both Mexico and Arizona, Ruiz-Bours argued for the first 

time that California, not Mexico, was the child’s home state. Id. at 375–77, 

¶¶ 4–14, 36. She also argued that the child’s ten-month absence from 

California was a temporary absence. Id. at 377–78, ¶ 36. This court found 

her argument unpersuasive as she cited no authority that “might lead us to 

conclude her ten-month absence from California was a temporary absence, 

especially when she did not leave Mexico until July 2012, only to abscond 

to Arizona.” Id. at 378, ¶ 36. Here, Father has been absent from Arizona for 

nearly four years, returning only to discard the family’s possessions in 

2018.1 Like Ruiz-Bours, Father cites no legal authority that would allow us 

to consider his extended absence from Arizona “temporary.”

¶15 We also decline to find that the child was abducted from 

Arizona. Though the reasoning for the family’s trip to India is in dispute, 

Father acknowledges that the parties agreed to remove the child from 

Arizona in August 2017. There is no evidence in the record that Indian 

courts have declined jurisdiction. To the contrary, Mother provided 

evidence that at the time of filing that the parties were involved in a child 

custody case in the Family Court of Tirupur, India. As the child’s home 

state has not declined jurisdiction on the basis that Arizona is a better forum 

to determine custody, the superior court correctly declined jurisdiction.

CONCLUSION

¶16 We affirm the superior court’s dismissal of Father’s petition.

1 On October 18, 2021, Father informed the Court of Appeals that he 

is physically present in Arizona. Father re-entered the United States on 

October 16, 2021. He holds an H1-B non-resident visa set to expire on 

September 30, 2023. Father’s current presence in Arizona does not change 

our conclusion that at the time of filing, he was domiciled in the United 

Kingdom.