Court Opinion

ID: 9844743
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:08:04.866529+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:41.235393
License: Public Domain

MILLER, Justice,
concurring:
While I concur with the majority’s Syllabus, I would solve this issue on a different basis.
There is no question, as the majority points out in note 13 of its opinion, that at the time the wife filed for divorce and child custody in Wood County in October, 1983, the circuit court was the “home state” under W.Va.Code, 48-10-2(5) (1981),1 of the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act (UCCJA). This was and had been the domicile of the parties and the children since at least July, 1972, when the parties were married in Wood County.
The fact that the father one month later “snatched” the children from their mother and took them to Florida where he concealed them would not destroy West Virginia’s “home state” jurisdiction. The fact that the family law master and the judge of the circuit court erroneously thought a custody determination could not be made because the children were not within the state would also not defeat West Virginia’s “home state” jurisdiction as the suit was never dismissed.2
It is clear under the UCCJA, as set out in W.Va.Code, 48-10-6(a), that once West Virginia had “home state” jurisdiction and so long as the custody issue was pending, Florida under the UCCJA “shall not exercise its jurisdiction.”3 It is uniformly held that where a court is exercising jurisdiction in substantial conformity with the UCCJA, another state could should not intervene. Morgan v. Morgan, 666 P.2d 1026 (Alaska 1983); Lopez v. District Court, Fourth Judicial Dist., etc., 199 Colo. 207, 606 P.2d 853 (1980); Steele v. Steele, 250 Ga. 101, 296 S.E.2d 570 (1982); Levinson through Levinson v. Levinson, 354 Pa.Super. 407, 512 A.2d 14 (1986); see generally Annot., 96 A.L.R.3d 968 § 6 (1979).
Thus, to my mind, there is no need for the majority to consider whether the mother met the six-month requirement of W.Va. Code, 48-10-3(a), since her custody suit was never dismissed. The fact that there had been a final divorce decree did not mean that the court abandoned its custody jurisdiction. The mother’s motion to the court to consider the custody issue in July, 1987, did not constitute a new suit, such that she had to meet the terms of W.Va. Code, 48-10-3(a).
The delay in determining the custody issue in West Virginia was not a result of any bad faith on the mother’s part. It was caused, as earlier pointed out, by an erroneous legal conclusion on the part of the family law master and circuit judge that custody could not be determined because the children were not currently within the jurisdiction.
To allow the father to benefit from this delay after he created it by kidnapping and concealing the children in Florida for over three years would destroy the very purpose of the UCCJA. The Act specifically recognizes the doctrine of unclean hands and admonishes a court to refrain from jurisdiction “[i]f the petitioner for an initial decree *719has wrongfully taken the child from another state or has engaged in similar reprehensible conduct[.]” W.Va.Code, 48-10-8(a).4
For these reasons, I do not share the majority’s view that another hearing is necessary in order to show that the circuit court acted in the best interest of the children. To my mind, the circuit court acted properly and we have no obligation to give full faith and credit to the Florida decree,5 since it had no initial jurisdiction under the UCCJA under the Florida counterpart to W.Va.Code, 48-10-6(a). See note 3, supra.

. Under W.Va.Code, 48-10-2(5) (1981), the "home state” is defined as:
"the state in which the child immediately preceding the time involved lived with his parents, a parent or a person acting as a parent for at least six consecutive months and, in the case of a child less than six months old, the state in which the child lived from birth with any of the persons named. Periods of temporary absence of any of the named persons are counted as part of the six-month or other period[.]"
The term "time involved” is the date when the suit was filed seeking child custody.

. The majority acknowledges this fact in note 1, citing W.Va.Code, 48-10-3(c) (1981), which states: "Physical presence of the child, while desirable, is not a prerequisite for jurisdiction to determine his custody.”

.W.Va.Code, 48-10-6(a), provides:
"A court of this State shall not exercise its jurisdiction under this article if at the time of filing the petition a proceeding concerning the custody of the child was pending in a court of another state exercising jurisdiction substantially in conformity with this article, unless the proceeding is stayed by the court of the other state because this State is a more appropriate forum or for other reasons.”
Florida has a similar provision in Fla.Stat.Ann. § 61.1314(1) (West 1985).

. The Florida statutory counterpart is Fla.Stat. Ann. § 61.1318 (West 1985).

. It appears that the Florida courts have had a history of ignoring out-of-state custody decrees, as evidenced by these quotations from an article by Elizabeth S. Baker entitled Does Florida Create Intractable Jurisdictional Deadlocks? in the March 1988 Florida Bar Journal:
"Florida appellate courts recognize that Florida has been widely known as a state that shows disdain for the custody decisions of sister states, to the point that a Florida litigant can successfully obtain a trial de novo on custody issues despite the existence of out-of-state decrees. The Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act was designed to remedy that problem.

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"The 10 years following Florida’s enactment of the UCCJA have brought little decisional harmony, with the result that Florida often
incorrectly exercises jurisdiction over children who are physically present within its borders even though courts in other states are properly exercising jurisdiction regarding those children....
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“Trial courts in Florida have difficulty recognizing that a child who is physically present in Florida is not necessarily under the jurisdiction of the Florida courts.
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"... Florida’s record of failing to follow the UCCJA makes it a candidate for further scrutiny by federal courts. In short, it is time for Florida to give appropriate recognition to sister state custody decrees." The Florida Bar Journal/March 1988 at 43-45. (Footnotes omitted).
See Bretti v. MacDonald, 501 So.2d 168 (Fla.App.1987); Hickey v. Baxter, 461 So.2d 1364 (Fla.App.1984); Barnes v. Ostrander, 450 So.2d 1253 (Fla.App.1984).