Maryland Divorce Attorney Blog

Recently an interstate custody case has been showered with media attention. As a Maryland Child Custody lawyer, I discuss it here, not because of its drama, but because it is instructive on how interstate custody cases are handled. At the center of the dispute is Rifqa Barry a 17 year old whose Muslim parents had immigrated to the United States to provide their daughter with medical treatment for an eye ailment. She had converted to Christianity and run away in fear that her parents might harm her because of her repudiation of her Muslim religion. In Florida, the courts had assumed emergency jurisdiction over her based on the allegations of threats by her parents. Investigation of these allegations failed to corroborate her fears.

Dispute about which state should assume jurisdiction fall under the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act that has been adopted by all 50 states. Prior to the act, states courts could often battle over jurisdiction and produce contradictory results. The act was adopted to avoid conflicts among the states and thus bring "order to chaos". Under the Act, one of the states that has jurisdiction will bow out in favor of the other. This is based on a coordinated determination of which state is the more appropriate forum. This decision is made by way of a phone call between the two judges who confer by telephone.

This is exactly what occurred last week, when Judge Daniel Dawson of Florida and Judge Elizabeth Gill of Ohio conferred over speaker phones with lawyers, representatives of numerous government agencies and the media listening. The conclusion was that Judge Dawson received sufficient assurances of Riqa'a safety ( she will be put in custody of the Franklin County Ohio Children's Services Agency and place with a pre-selected foster care family) that he ruled that Florida would decline jurisdiction.

My judgment as a parent and former elected official is that Ohio has been sufficiently alerted to the concerns about Rifqa's safety. The decision appears sound. One can only hope that the family can be reconciled. No doubt that was a factor that weighed heavily in favor of the transfer.

Veteran child custody attorneys know how complex interstate custody disputes can become. The Maryland Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act brings "some order to the chaos" by avoiding jurisdictional conflict amongst states that could otherwise exercise jurisdiction over a particular child custody dispute. Under the Act which has been enacted by all fifty states, two or more states may have jurisdiction at the same time. The Act envisions that one of the states which has jurisdiction will decline to exercise it after finding that (1) the state is an inconvenient forum to make the custody determination and (2) a court of another state is a more appropriate forum.
A recent decision by Maryland's highest appeals court illustrates a critical step in this process.

In Krebs vs Krebs, the opinion focused on the process by which judges in states with competing jurisdiction communicate with each other and exchange information. This is usually done via a telephone conference that usually results in one jurisdiction declining jurisdiction and the other accepting it.

The Krebs case involved a child who had left his mother's home in Arizona to spend the summer in Maryland with his father. After a custody dispute arose involving these two states, the judges in Maryland and Arizona conferred and decided that the Maryland Court should resolve the dispute. Custody was awarded to the Maryland father. The Maryland Court of Appeals refused to consider the merits of the Arizona mother's argument that the result of the judges' conference, conferring sole jurisdiction on Maryland, violated the Act. The Court ruled that if Mother wanted to appeal that issue, she needed to appeal that issue in the Arizona courts.

This result is an example of how complex interstate custody disputes can become and a reminder of how the conference between judges under the Act can be pivotal in determining the final results.