Opinion ID: 1257752
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The UCCJA Generally

Text: The Model Act was approved by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws and the American Bar Association in 1968. 9 U.L.A. 111 (1979). In a prefatory note to the Act, the Commissioners referred to the growing public concern, id., over the fact that every year thousands of children are shifted from state to state, and to other countries, as well as from one family to another, while their parents battle over their custody in the courts of several jurisdictions. Because of our mobile society, a child may have been moved from state to state even before the issue of his custody goes to court. When an order is entered deciding the issue, this frequently does not end the child's migration. Often, the parent who loses the custody fight is unwilling to accept the court's judgment. The dissatisfied parents will remove the child in an unguarded moment or fail to return him after a visit and will seek their luck in the court of a distant state where they hope to findand often do finda more sympathetic ear for their plea for custody. Id. at 112. The Commissioners noted that the emotional harm done to these children by these experiences can hardly be overestimated. Id. A child who has never been given the chance to develop a sense of belonging and whose personal attachments when beginning to form are cruelly disrupted, may well be crippled for life, to his own lasting detriment and the detriment of society. Id. The Commissioners observed that this unfortunate state of affairs has been aided and facilitated rather than discouraged by the law. Id. They said that there was no statutory law in the area and that the case law was unsettled. There was no certainty as to which state had jurisdiction when persons seeking custody approached the courts of several states simultaneously or successively. And because the Supreme Court of the United States had never settled the question whether the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution applied to custody decrees, see, e.g., Ford v. Ford, 371 U.S. 187, 83 S.Ct. 273, 9 L.Ed.2d 240 (1962); Kovacs v. Brewer, 356 U.S. 604, 78 S.Ct. 963, 2 L.Ed.2d 1008 (1958); New York ex rel. Halvey v. Halvey, 330 U.S. 610, 67 S.Ct. 903, 91 L.Ed. 1133 (1947), many states felt free to modify foreign custody decrees almost at random, usually on the ground that a change in circumstances warranted a custody award to a different person. Given this status of the law, courts of the several states often acted in isolation and in competition, with unfortunate results. Courts of two states would simultaneously award custody of the same child to different parents. The parents would not know which court to obey. Also, the person who had possession of the child had a tactical advantage because physical presence of the child enabled courts to assume jurisdiction and often assured the parent in possession of a decision in his or her favor. This generated the practice of child stealing and kidnapping to gain possession of the child. 9 U.L.A. at 113. The Commissioners reported that uniform legislation had been advocated for years to bring interstate stability to custody awards and to remedy this intolerable state of affairs where self-help and the rule of `seize-and-run' prevail[ed]. Id. The Model Act was adopted by the Commissioners to bring some semblance of order into the existing chaos. Id. at 114. It was intended that the general policies of the Model Act and some of its specific provisions apply to international custody disputes. Id. [1] At least 45 states have adopted the Model Act in some form. Id. at 15 (Supp.1983).