LD 986
pg. 25
Page 24 of 77 An Act To Enact the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act Amendments of 1996 an... Page 26 of 77
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LR 467
Item 1

 
For example, the child-support order may have been issued by a
tribunal of Washington, D.C. Subsequently the obligee and child
have moved to Virginia, the obligor now resides in Maryland, and
perhaps one or both parties continue to be employed in
Washington. The possibility that under such circumstances the
parties reasonably may prefer to continue to deal with the
issuing tribunal convinced the Drafting Committee to add this
exception to the basic principle of CEJ to modify.

 
The other side of the coin follows logically. Just as
Subsection (a) defines the retention of continuing, exclusive
jurisdiction, by clear implication the subsection also
identifies how jurisdiction to modify may be lost. That is, if
all the relevant persons--the obligor, the individual obligee,
and the child--have permanently left the issuing State, the
issuing State no longer has an appropriate nexus with the
parties or child to justify the exercise of jurisdiction to
modify its child-support order. See In re Marriage of
Erickson, Wash. App. Div. 3 2000, 991 P.2d 123, 98 (Wash. App.
2000); Groseth v. Groseth, 600 N.W.2d 159 (Neb. 1999).
Further, the issuing tribunal has no current information about
the factual circumstances of anyone involved, and the
taxpayers of that State have no reason to expend public funds
on the process. Note, however, that the original order of the
issuing tribunal remains valid and enforceable. That order is
in effect not only in the issuing State but also in those
States in which the order has been registered. It also may be
registered and enforced in additional States even after the
issuing State has lost its power to modify its order, see
Sections 601-604, infra. The original order remains in effect
until it is properly modified in accordance with the narrow
terms of Sections 609-612, infra.

 
Subsection (b)(1), reworded in 2001, explicitly states that
the issuing State may also lose its continuing, exclusive
jurisdiction to modify if the parties consent in a record for
another State to assume jurisdiction to modify (even though
one of the parties or the child continues to reside in the
issuing State). Filing of the record in the issuing State
divests the issuing tribunal of its CEJ. See Peace v. Peace,
737 A.2d 1164 (N.J. Super. 1999). The Drafting Committee
anticipated that such an agreement would seldom occur because
of the almost universal desire of each party to prefer his or
her local tribunal; but, the Committee also believed that the
parties should be allowed to agree upon an alternate forum if
they choose to do so. The 2001 rewording of this provision
also makes this procedure available in a situation in which
all the parties and the child have left the issuing State and
are in agreement that a tribunal of the State in which only
the movant resides shall assume
modification jurisdiction.


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