Fourth, it provides rules for modifying existing child support awards when they are transmitted from one state to another for enforcement. A court of any state must be able to obtain personal jurisdiction over the parties to a child support proceeding in order to adjudicate it. This is a due process requirement. No court is allowed willy-nilly to hail just anybody into court to be subject to a proceeding. Presence in a state is sufficient connection.
Courts can adjudicate matters pertaining to such parties.
It then becomes a question of acts and events within the state that connect the party with the state and the controversy, even though a party is not physically present. Over time, through case law and by statute, principles of connection that are appropriate to a child support proceeding have been worked out. Engaging in sexual intercourse in a state with the possibility that the child was conceived by that act of intercourse, is sufficient connection. All that is necessary to take that personal jurisdiction is to serve the individual with process informing him or her of the proceeding. In the usual case, a child support proceeding is initiated in a state in which the child is found.