HOW IS JURISDICTION DEFINED IF THE PARENTS RESIDE IN SEPARATE STATES?

There is the UCCJEA, the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Enforcement Act. That is the federal law of the land. Kansas has ratified it, so there is a law that closely mirrors the federal law that governs jurisdiction. Under the UCCJEA, the most commonly used in these cases is called home state jurisdiction. Under the UCCJEA, home state jurisdiction refers to whether the child has lived in a state for 6 months. If we were asking it today, we would ask, “Has this child, whom I am looking to have orders on potentially, lived in the state of Kansas for six months? If so, then Kansas is the child’s home state.”

The highest binding finding of jurisdiction under the UCCJEA is the home state. Meaning, there is a clear home state for a child that trumps other ways a court can establish jurisdiction. If the child has been in a home state for 6 months, that state's court should have jurisdiction. You can have a situation where, say, Kansas may have been the child's home state, and then there is a move that's resolved outside of court because one parent sent the notice, they talked it out, and reached an amicable agreement. Then the parent moves with the kids to Colorado. At that point, we assume the parties originally went to court in Kansas because they were both in Kansas at some point.

In most court orders, the court that establishes jurisdiction will retain continuing jurisdiction over the children until it is deemed to lack adequate jurisdiction. Say somebody moves to Colorado and stays for 12 months. At that point, they can choose between two options. They could still file something in Kansas with continuing jurisdiction, or, if they wanted, file something in the Colorado court and ask for a change of jurisdiction as well. The reason you would list there is “Because the kids have been here for 12 months,” and under the UCCJEA home-state jurisdiction provision, home state is determined after six months. In that scenario, the court in Kansas would more than likely defer and say, “You’re right, it’s probably more appropriate to have this in Colorado.”

You should be doing it wherever the kids have lived for the last six months. From there, if you cannot get any of those home states to apply in any way, there are other provisions. The next rung on the ladder is significant connection jurisdiction, and, as the UCCJEA generally reads, when a child has no home state or when a home state declines jurisdiction, another state court may exercise jurisdiction over the child if it has a sufficient tie to the state. If a child does not have a home state, the question of which court should have jurisdiction would be a matter of where we think the child is more connected. In most of these cases, there is no clear, bright answer. It comes to arguments, and who can make the more convincing argument to the court on jurisdiction.