Court Opinion

ID: 9771099
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:31:57.911281+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:25.221543
License: Public Domain

Tom Glaze, Justice, concurring. The Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act (PKPA) controls the outcome of this custody case, but the PKPA was not argued or considered at the hearing before the chancellor. The issue is whether the Arkansas court, which initially awarded custody in this matter, has continuing jurisdiction or whether the Oklahoma court acquired jurisdiction to modify Arkansas’s earlier award because all parties have since moved their residences from Arkansas and Oklahoma subsequently became the home state of the parties’ child. The majority opinion points out that the trial court did not resolve whether, under the terms of the PKPA, the child’s mother, Judy Adcock, had moved her legal residence from Arkansas, and for that reason the father’s, Keith Hudson’s, petition for writ of prohibition should be denied. While I harbor serious doubt that Adcock retained her legal residence in Arkansas to permit the Arkansas court to retain continuing jurisdiction of this custody case, I must agree that the parties and the trial court failed to develop this issue fully. Arkansas law is well settled that a writ of prohibition is inappropriate when a trial court has not resolved a factual dispute necessary to determine jurisdiction, thus, I join in the majority court’s decision to deny Hudson’s petition. I only add that the PKPA law establishes a home-state bias which is designed to provide certainty in a custody situation like the one now before us. The mere fact that an Arkansas court initially awarded custody in this case does not mean Arkansas’s jurisdiction is automatically maintained or preferred. In fact, if both parties and their child left the state to reside elsewhere, Arkansas lost jurisdiction and the child’s home-state jurisdiction, as defined in the PKPA, controls which state has jurisdiction to modify (if at all) the initial Arkansas court’s decree. The child’s home state in these circumstances appears to be Oklahoma, but because the record is not clear on this point; therefore, I agree that a writ of prohibition does not he. Corbin and Thornton, JJ., join this concurring opinion.