Opinion ID: 789256
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: New York Legal Custody

Text: 54 The 1984 judgment, on its face, granted a divorce between Brian Bagot and Frances Wright, and granted custody of the children of their marriage to Frances Wright. Bagot argues that this grant of custody was invalid, because the New York court lacked jurisdiction to decide his custody.
55 There is no question that the New York County Supreme Court had jurisdiction to enter a judgment of divorce between Brian Bagot and Frances Wright. In New York, the Supreme Court can obtain in rem jurisdiction over a marriage if (among other possibilities) either party to the marriage has resided in New York for two years. N.Y. Dom. Rel. Law § 230(5) (2004). But the New York courts have jurisdiction over child custody determinations only if they can meet the higher standards of the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act (UCCJA), N.Y. Dom. Rel. Law § 75-d(1) (1999), which we set forth in the margin (and rely upon infra ). 10 The mere fact of divorce jurisdiction does not create child-custody jurisdiction; the requisites for the two types of jurisdiction are different and must be separately satisfied. See, e.g., Foley v. Foley, 170 Misc.2d 87, 649 N.Y.S.2d 999 (N.Y.Sup.Ct.1996); see generally Merril Sobie, Practice Commentary to N.Y. Dom. Rel. Law § 76, section 2 (2002). 56 At the time of his parents' divorce, Bagot had never set foot in New York, so paragraph (a) of § 75-d(1), which applies where New York is the child's home state, could not have created jurisdiction. Paragraph (b), which requires a significant connection with New York and substantial evidence within the state, was similarly inapplicable, again because there is no contention that Bagot had ever been to New York to establish such a connection. Maximum rather than minimum contacts are required, Vanneck v. Vanneck, 49 N.Y.2d 602, 427 N.Y.S.2d 735, 404 N.E.2d 1278, 1282 (1980), and the legislative intent behind paragraph (b) was to limit jurisdiction rather than to proliferate it, id. Paragraph (c), which creates emergency jurisdiction where the child is physically present in New York, was inapplicable because Bagot was not in the state at the time of the disputed custody grant. 57 This leaves us with paragraph (d), a fallback provision allowing New York to take jurisdiction where no other state has done so and such an exercise of jurisdiction is in the best interests of the child. 11 However, we doubt that a New York court would have assumed jurisdiction over a child who had never set foot in the state, and who lived with his mother in Guyana, on the basis of § 75-d(1)(d). Cf. Sobie, Practice Commentary to N.Y. Dom. Rel. § 75-d, section 4 (1988) (The possibility of using the [§ 75-d(1)(d)] provision is fairly remote; examples might include migrant workers, hobos or perhaps members of a circus troop.). As long as it was not manifestly against Bagot's best interests to leave Guyana in control of his custody, a New York court would not have taken jurisdiction over his custody under paragraph (d). See Nesa v. Baten, 290 A.D.2d 663, 664, 736 N.Y.S.2d 173 (N.Y.App.Div.2002) ([I]t is difficult to see how the [Bangladeshi] children's best interests would be served by having a New York court litigate issues of custody.). 58 Even if there was some conceivable way that the New York court could have taken jurisdiction under paragraph (d), such jurisdiction would require findings that it was in the best interests of the child. See People ex rel. Bruzzese v. Bruzzese, 70 A.D.2d 957, 958, 417 N.Y.S.2d 763 (N.Y.App.Div.1979). The two-page form order lacks such findings, and provides no reason to believe that the New York court believed that it had § 75-d(d) jurisdiction over the child custody determination. 59 Thus there is no real doubt that the New York County Supreme Court lacked jurisdiction to determine Bagot's custody. The divorce decree appears to have been simply a form order, normally used for in-state divorce cases where custody over the children is easily established; the presiding justice presumably did not notice that he was exceeding his jurisdiction, and no one pointed out this error at the time. 12 60
61 Respondents contend, however, that this Court should refuse to examine the validity of the New York custody decree now, almost twenty years after that decree was issued. They argue forcefully that the INS's successor agency should be able to rely on the finality of state custody orders, and that, if immigration petitioners were allowed to mount collateral attacks on such orders, the result would be a heavy burden on the courts and the INS's successor agency. Courts might, the argument continues, have to look into whether there was proper service of the custody order, whether there was personal jurisdiction over the parties, and whether the custody decision was proper on its merits. Such inquiries would be costly and time-consuming, and might be susceptible to fraud and manipulation. 62 We share Respondents' concern for the finality of state-court judgments in immigration proceedings, and we confine our review of the New York court's custody order to the purely legal question whether, on the undisputed facts presented by this case, that court had subject-matter jurisdiction to issue a custody decree. 13 Such a narrow review does not implicate the concerns raised by the Respondents: we need not look into service of process, personal jurisdiction, or the merits of the custody determination; nor must we engage in any fact-finding that could be undermined by a petitioner's fraud. In this case, however, the predicate facts — that the divorce decree granted custody of Bagot, who had never been in the United States, to his mother — are undisputed, and they lead inevitably to the legal conclusion that the New York Supreme Court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the custody determination under § 75-d. We feel confident that we can reach this conclusion without entering the thicket that Respondents conjure. 63 Basic principles of conflict of laws, including New York's jurisprudence in the area, support our refusal to recognize custody decrees not properly based on subject matter jurisdiction. Under New York law, and the UCCJA as adopted by most states, 14 one state need not recognize the custody decree of another state where the decree was not made under factual circumstances meeting the jurisdictional standards of the [UCCJA]. N.Y. Jur. Domestic Relations § 457 & n.21 (citing Wilber v. Buelow, 136 A.D.2d 786, 523 N.Y.S.2d 249 (N.Y.App.Div.1988) (refusing to give full faith and credit to Texas custody decree where Texas court lacked UCCJA jurisdiction)). No state following the UCCJA — including New York — would enforce the custody decree at issue here; we do not believe that a federal court should be bound by a decree that no state would consider binding. 64 Respondents correctly note that federal courts in immigration cases disfavor collateral attacks on the state convictions that give rise to aggravated-felony removals. See, e.g., Drakes v. INS, 330 F.3d 600 (3d Cir.2003); Giammario v. Hurney, 311 F.2d 285, 287 (3d Cir.1962). But a collateral attack on the merits of a criminal conviction is much more susceptible to the problems posited by the Respondents than is an attack on a custody decree's subject-matter jurisdiction. 65 Child custody is a much more fluid affair than is an aggravated felony conviction. Indeed, few things in the law are as ephemeral as a child custody adjudication. To be sure, a state court's judgment of conviction renders an immigrant a removable aggravated felon; in the normal case, that status is unlikely to change. But see 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(v) (authorizing waiver of deportation for certain felons granted a full pardon by the President or a Governor). But a court's order granting child custody is rarely the final word on the subject; family circumstances constantly change, and family courts throughout the land frequently modify orders for full or partial custody (visitation) to better accommodate the (changing) best interests of the child. See 45 N.Y. Jur.2d Domestic Relations § 501. 66 Indeed, at oral argument in this case, Respondents conceded that Brian Bagot could have arranged to have the 1984 custody order modified to comport with the reality that he had undisputed physical custody over Odiri Bagot. Our deference to the finality of state criminal convictions is due in part to the fact that they are intended to be final; such deference to the finality of frequently and easily modified state custody determinations would, we think, be misplaced. 67 We therefore cannot find that Frances Wright had legal custody of Odiri Bagot under New York law. The decree that granted her custody was facially invalid, and no court in New York or anywhere else would defer to it.