Court Opinion

ID: 9658197
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 20:51:03.545609+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:52.798029
License: Public Domain

BABLITCH, J.
(dissenting). I believe the trial court correctly concluded it had no power to order the custodial parent to pay child support in a IJRESA action, and would therefore affirm its judgment dismissing the petition.
The record does not contain a transcript of the proceeding before the trial court because the appellant certified to this court that a transcript was unnecessary to decide the issue before us. The trial court’s findings of fact are not challenged, however, and this court is not free to ignore them.
The trial court found that a Wisconsin divorce decree awarded custody of the children to their father, and that the mother has present physical custody. It then found as follows:
3. That the [father] gave the physical custody of the minor children to [the mother] solely for the purpose of transporting those children to the home of their maternal *279grandparents in the State of Kansas; that the grandparents had agreed to have the children live with them and the [father] and the grandparents had worked out a satisfactory arrangement in all respects; that the children in fact lived with the grandparents for some period of time before being removed by [the mother] without the permission, consent or knowledge of the [father] ; that the [father] is ready, willing and able to resume physical custodianship of the minor children.
As I see it, the issue presented by these facts is whether a parent to whom legal custody has been awarded, and whose legal obligation to support the children has thus been adjudicated to be that of providing for their necessities in his or her care, has a legal duty, enforceable under URESA, to pay child support to the other parent who has obtained physical custody without modification of the custody award and without permission of the custodial parent.
No published decision in Wisconsin has addressed this issue. With one exception, the courts which have considered it have concluded that the custodial parent has no legal duty to support which may be enforced through URESA by the noncustodial parent. The exception, County of Clearwater, Minn. v. Petrash, 598 P.2d 138 (Colo. 1979), rejected the contention that the mother’s refusal to return to the custodial father a child who had travelled to the mother’s state of residence to live with her constituted a defense to a URESA action brought by a welfare department in that state. The sole ground of the decision was the familiar rule that a child’s right to support is unaffected by the misconduct of a parent. 598 P.2d at 139. Like the majority in this case, the Colorado court emphasized that custody and child support are separate and independent issues. The court did not consider its jurisdiction under URESA to impose a support obligation on a parent having legal custody.
*280Other courts presented with this factual situation have focused on the limits of their power to make a support order under URESA. Campbell v. Campbell, 617 P.2d 66 (Ariz. Ct. App. 1980); Hethcox v. Hethcox, 246 S.E.2d 444 (Ga. Ct. App. 1978); State of New Jersey v. Morales, 299 N.E.2d 920 (Ohio Ct. App. 1973).
In Campbell, the court of appeals held that the noncustodial mother lacked standing to invoke URESA remedies under the Arizona counterpart to sec. 52.10 (13), Stats., which allows a petition on behalf of a minor obligee to be executed and filed “by a person having legal custody of the minor.” (Emphasis supplied.) It noted that Petrash failed to consider this section of the uniform act in allowing the welfare department to invoke the act’s enforcement remedies. 617 P.2d at 69 n. 8. It also noted the policy articulated in Arizona’s counterpart to sec. 52.10(23) that “[t]he determination or enforcement of a duty of support owed to one obligee is unaffected by any interference by another obligee with rights of custody or visitation granted by a court.” It stated, however:
This language does not compel an interpretation that the interference with custody by a noncustodial parent can actually create a duty of support payable to the interfering parent. Under our holding the appellee-father’s duty to support his child is unaffected by appellant’s interference with his right of custody. However, appellant as an obligee without legal custody is not permitted to create an obligation on appellee’s part to pay child support to her while she interferes with his right of custody. (Emphasis in original; citation omitted.)
617 P.2d at 69.
In Hethcox, the Georgia Court of Appeals reached the same result, even though that state’s counterpart of the standing subsection purported to allow “the person having custody” to file a petition on behalf of a minor, omitting the adjective “legal.” The court said:
*281We are constrained to conclude that where the statute requires the furnishing of support for dependent children to the person having custody of those children, the statute reasonably is restricted to that person having lawful custody by virtue of a court order or with the consent of the obligor parent. To hold otherwise would be to reward a physical custodian who is acting in actual defiance of and contrary to the order of a court of the responding state.
246 S.E.2d at 445-46.
Despite its holding on the standing question, the Georgia court proceeded to consider the substantive issue, which it phrased as “whether a parent not having legal custody of dependent children is entitled to support under URESA.” 246 S.E.2d at 446. It adopted the rule set by the Ohio Court of Appeals in State of New Jersey v. Morales, supra, holding that the custodial parent has “ ‘no duty’ ” to pay child support where the noncustodial parent has wrongfully procured physical custody. 246 S.E.2d at 446 (quoting Morales, 299 N.E.2d at 924).
The Morales “no duty” holding rested on the proposition that the divorce decree awarding custody to the father had already fixed the support obligation as between the parents. The Ohio court stated:
[We conclude] that Ohio law with regard to what constitutes the duty to support the minor children of the parties must be applied. Where there is a judicial order relating to the custody of minor children, that order has the effect of law and is that which should determine the obligation of the respective parents to their minor children.
The duty of the support of these minor children, and the validity of any determination of such duty, is necessarily based upon any existing law or court order relating to the status of the child and parent from whom such support is sought.
299 N.E.2d at 924.
I find the reasoning of these cases compelling. They are not inconsistent with State ex rel. Hubbard v. Hub*282bard, 110 Wis. 2d 683, 329 N.W.2d 202 (1983), which involved a different issue. In Hubbard the mother had legal custody when she removed the children from Wisconsin to California, where she obtained a support order against the father. The question was whether the California order was enforceable in Wisconsin under URESA, and whether the URESA court had jurisdiction to consider the father’s defense and counterclaim for custody based on the mother’s contempt of the Wisconsin decree’s prohibition against removal of the child from the state. The supreme court held that “the support obligation [is] the sole issue before the responding court” in a URESA action, 110 Wis. 2d at 688, 329 N.W.2d at 205, and that such an obligation is “unaffected by the misconduct of the custodial parent.” 110 Wis. 2d at 690, 329 N.W.2d at 206. The holding makes sense, and is the law in the vast majority of the jurisdictions which have considered that issue.1
The precise issue in this case, though, is whether the misconduct of a noncustodial parent can, within the jurisdictional confines of URESA, be used to create a support obligation from the legal custodian to the absconding other parent, where that obligation has been previously adjudicated to be nonexistent and the adjudication has not been modified. By awarding him custody, the Wisconsin divorce court defined the father’s duty of support to be that of providing for his children’s necessities while under his care and control. The trial court found that he is presently willing and able to perform that duty. It has been frequently held that the stated purpose of URESA “to improve and extend by reciprocal legislation the enforcement of duties of support,” sec. 52.10(1), Stats., *283means the enforcement of “ ‘existing duties of support against persons legally liable for such support,’ ” rather than the creation of new support obligations. People ex rel. St. Louis v. St. Louis, 413 N.E.2d 157, 159 (Ill. App. Ct. 1980) (quoting Moffat v. Moffat, 612 P.2d 967, 975 (Cal. 1980) (emphasis in original).2 As the Maryland Court of Special Appeals held in a URESA action brought after a divorce decree had relieved the father of any support obligation:
Where the decree avoiding the support obligation is not appealed before it becomes enrolled, the propriety of that decree is beyond the jurisdiction of the URESA court . . . and there is no duty to support under the Act. The purpose of the Act is to improve and extend “the enforcement of duties of support.” ... It does not address the creation or resurrection of those duties where none exist or where an existing duty has been relieved ....
Unless and until the divorce decree is modified to resurrect a duty to support, there is no obligation to support imposed or imposable; consequently nothing exists to enforce by a URESA action. (Citations omitted.)
Chance v. LaPausky, 402 A.2d 1329, 1331 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 1979).
Because the father in this case is willing to comply with the only duty to support which he owes — that of supporting the children in his custody — the trial court *284has no power under URESA to impose a different duty-absent a modification of the custody award. Whether this conclusion is phrased in terms of the noncustodial mother’s lack of standing, or of the court’s own lack of jurisdiction, the result is the same. Without a modification of the custody decree, no duty to pay support to the children’s mother is imposed or imposable, and there is nothing for URESA to enforce.
The possibility that some other state might award custody to the mother under the Uniform Child Custody Act is immaterial. There is no suggestion in the record that a change in legal custody was ever sought in any state. The facts of record are insufficient to determine whether Louisiana, or any state, would have jurisdiction to make such an award. I would hold that until some court with the power to do so modifies the Wisconsin custody decree, the mother has no right to any remedy provided by URESA.

 See e.g., Kline v. Kline, 542 S.W.2d 499 (Ark. 1976); Vecellio v. Vercellio, 313 So. 2d 61 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1975); Brown v. Turnbloom, 280 N.W.2d 473 (Mich. Ct. App. 1979); England v. England, 337 N.W.2d 681 (Minn. 1983).

 State ex rel. Arvayo v. Guerrero, 517 P.2d 526, 529 (Ariz. Ct. App. 1973) (since order terminating father’s support obligation was not appealed, it was “beyond the jurisdiction” of the URESA court, and mother had no right to a remedy under the uniform act); Ray v. Pentlicki, 375 So. 2d 875, 878 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1979) (father’s duty of support was “circumscribed” by order suspending payments entered by divorce court, regardless of propriety of that order); accord People ex rel. Oetjen v. Oetjen, 416 N.E.2d 278, 283 (Ill. App. Ct. 1980) (“once a child support obligation has been abated by a post-j'udgment order in the divorce action, there remains no duty of support which may be enforced through the remedies available under URESA”).