Court of Appeals: Michigan Did Not Have Jurisdiction Under UCCJEA to Hear Custody Case
The Michigan Court of Appeals has peremptorily vacated a trial court order that denied a mother’s motion to transfer a child-custody case from Michigan to Idaho.
In Ansah v Ansah (Docket No. 330121), the parties’ divorce judgment was entered in Calhoun County, Michigan. Several years later, the father filed a motion to modify custody in the Calhoun County Circuit Court. The mother requested that the court transfer the case to Idaho, where she had lived with the parties’ child since the divorce was final in 2013. The trial court denied the motion.
The mother appealed, asking the Court of Appeals to peremptorily reverse the trial court’s order denying her motion to transfer the custody case to Idaho.
In making this request, it was argued the trial court erred by not dismissing the father’s custody motion for lack of jurisdiction under the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act (UCCJEA), because neither party, nor the child, resided in Michigan. Rather, it was asserted the mother and the child resided in Idaho, while the father resided in Connecticut.
Given these facts, counsel for the mother argued that:
Michigan did not retain exclusive, continuing jurisdiction under the UCCJEA, specifically MCL 722.1202(1)(b); and
when a Michigan court lacks exclusive, continuing jurisdiction, in order to modify a child-custody determination it must have jurisdiction to make an initial child-custody determination under the UCCJEA, specifically MCL 722.1201.
In this case, counsel claimed the most recent time the child could have resided in Michigan was 2013 during the father’s parenting time, but only if the father had not yet relocated to Connecticut. However, the record was unclear as to when the father actually moved to Connecticut. Because the child had spent two-and-a-half years in Idaho before the custody action was filed in Calhoun County Circuit Court, counsel maintained that Michigan no longer had the requisite connection for exclusive, continuing jurisdiction.
Meanwhile, it was also argued that, even if the father returned to Michigan and the Calhoun County Circuit Court did have exclusive, continuing jurisdiction, the trial court still committed error by not considering all the factors in MCL 722.1207. This section of the UCCJEA lets a trial court transfer a case because Michigan is an inconvenient forum. And according to counsel, Michigan was an inconvenient forum and the trial court abused its discretion by not transferring the case to Idaho pursuant to §207.
The Court of Appeals agreed with the foregoing arguments. In an order issued by Judges Joel P. Hoekstra, David H. Sawyer, and William B. Murphy, the appeals court said the Calhoun County Circuit Court did not have continuing jurisdiction to hear the custody dispute and vacated the trial court’s order.
In reaching this conclusion, the Court of Appeals simply cited §201 and §202 of the UCCJEA, and did not elaborate further on its reasoning.
