MK Family Law

On March 9, 2021, the Arizona Court of Appeals affirmed its trial court in Greenbank v. Vanzant .   Ms. Vanzant, the paternal grandmother of the child at issue, negotiated a Visitation Agreement with Ms. Greenbank, the child's mother and only living parent.  That Visitation Agreement was approved and entered as a court order.   The Visitation Agreement gave Ms. Vanzant visitation, including continued visitation if Ms. Greenbank moved to Canada with the child.  It also required Ms. Greenbank to give Ms. Vanzant at least 14 days notice before moving to Canada.  A few days later, Ms. Greenbank moved to BC, Canada without any notice,  and refused to comply with the Visitation Agreement.  She failed to appear at a Superior Court hearing about her non-compliance.  A warrant was issued for her arrest. In 2013, Ms. Vanzant sought to domesticate the Visitation Agreement/Order in BC, but her application was dismissed in 2014, after the Canadian co...

In the unpublished opinion of  FY v. JL , the New Jersey Superior Court Appellate Division denied a Mother's attempt to modify the parties' Chinese child support order.   The parties, parents to a minor child born in China in 2006, entered into a Marital Settlement Agreement (MSA) in China, and divorced by consent in China in 2009.  Their agreement was made part of their "certificate of divorce" issued by the Chinese authorities, and the NJ court concluded this made it equivalent to a court order.  Their MSA settled issues related to property, finances, custody, and child support.  More specifically, the child was to remain in China with his mother, and she would also retain all of the parties' assets.  In return for retaining all assets, the father was not obligated to pay child support.  He remarried and moved to NJ with his new wife in 2017.  The child came and lived with his father in NJ in 2018 for almost a year, returned to China, and ...

The Court of Appeals of Texas, Houston affirmed the trial court in Cortez v. Cortez on December 29, 2020, which found that Texas no longer had continuing, exclusive jurisdiction to modify its custody order. Mr. and Ms. Cortez are parents to two sons, both born in Texas, but who moved to Mexico a few months after their father filed for divorce and custody in Texas in 2012.  The 2013 custody order made the parents joint managing conservators and ordered Ms. Cortez to return with the children to Texas by August 1, 2014.  The custody order confirmed that the children's home state was Texas (Mr. Cortez commenced the child-custody proceedings two months prior to Ms. Cortez relocating the children to Mexico). Apparently, Ms. Cortez failed to return the children to Texas in August 2014.  In August 2015, Mr. Cortez filed a motion to modify the custodial arrangement in Texas, arguing Texas had exclusive, continuing jurisdiction pursuant to the UCCJEA.  Ms. Cortez sought to di...

The Superior Court of Pennsylvania, in JS v. RSS , addressed an issue of an international relocation and a U.S. court's subject matter jurisdiction over a custody modification action.  The facts are long and twisted, but the salient ones are: the parents divorced in 2015.  The father sought custody of their child with a request to relocate him to Hungary in November 2015.  The mother agreed to the father's custody of the child and the child's relocation to Hungary, believing the father was entering a witness protection program. The father didn't move to Hungary, and the parties actually threw the terms of their custody agreement out the window.  The mother had significant access to the child.  Apparently, however, the father did relocate the child to Hungary in July 2016, unbeknownst to mother.  The mother did not see the child after July 2016, but the father still traveled to Pennsylvania, and remained sexually intimate with the mother, even though he had ...