Lawyers Manual - Unified Court System

100 Liberty Aldrich and Lauren Shapiro
Applicable Law
New York State Custody Law/Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction
and Enforcement Act 1
The Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act (UCCJEA)
governs interstate custody cases. 2 New York’s Act is based on a model adopted
by the Uniform Commissioners in 1997. As of May 2004, 35 states had adopted
some form of the Act. 3
New York’s UCCJEA explicitly addresses domestic violence issues. While
considerably more complicated in practice, the Act states that its legislative
intent is to improve protections for abused parents and children. It states that the
Act is intended:
to provide an effective mechanism to obtain and enforce orders
of custody and visitation across state lines and to do so in a
manner that ensures that the safety of the children is paramount
and that victims of domestic violence and child abuse are
protected. It is further the intent of the legislature that this article
be construed so as to ensure that custody and visitation by
perpetrators of domestic violence or homicide of a parent, legal
custodian, legal guardian, sibling, half-sibling or step sibling of
a child is restricted. 4
Since the UCCJEA is central to understanding your clients’ options in
interstate custody cases, the most important provisions are outlined here as a
preface to a fuller discussion on legal strategies for victims fleeing domestic
violence. In becoming more familiar with this area of the law, attorneys should
also review the UCCJEA model petitions and orders that were developed by the
New York State Office of Court Administration (OCA) and are posted on the
OCA website. 5 The National Center on Full Faith and Credit of the
Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence is an excellent resource on
interstate custody issues. 6
Bases for New York’s Jurisdiction: Initial Custody Proceeding7 The central issue in interstate custody cases is: which court should decide?
The UCCJEA answers that the court in the child’s “home state” has jurisdiction
to decide custody issues. New York’s UCCJEA (and that of the other states that
have adopted the model code’s formulation) defines the term “home state” as the
state where the child lived for six consecutive months before a custody petition