2008 Amendments to the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act ...

State state may not be used to acquire personal jurisdiction for a tribunal of the this State state to
modify a child-support order of another State state unless the requirements of Section 611 or 615
are met, or, in the case of a foreign support order, unless the requirements of Section 615 are
met.
Comment
Long-arm Provisions. Sections 201 and 202 assert what is commonly described as longarm
jurisdiction over a nonresident respondent for purposes of establishing a support order or
determining parentage. Read together, subsections (a) and (b) provide the basic jurisdictional
rules established by the act for interstate application of a support order. To sustain a support
order the tribunal must be able to assert personal jurisdiction over the parties. See Estin v. Estin,
334 U.S. 541, 68 S. Ct. 1213, 92 L. Ed. 1561 (1948), and Vanderbilt v. Vanderbilt, 354 U.S. 416,
77 S. Ct. 1360, 1 L. Ed. 2d 1456 (1957) (spousal support); Kulko v. Superior Court, 436 U.S. 84,
98 S. Ct. 1690, 56 L. Ed. 2d 132 (1978) (child support).
Inclusion of this long-arm provision in this interstate act is justified because residents of
two separate states are involved in the litigation, both of whom are subject to the personal
jurisdiction of the forum. Thus, the case has a clear interstate aspect, despite the fact that the
substantive and procedural law of the forum state is applicable to a lawsuit in what is a one-state
case. This rationale is sufficient to invoke additional UIFSA provisions in an otherwise intrastate
proceeding. See sections 202, 316, and 318. The intent is to ensure that every enacting state has a
long-arm statute that is as broad as constitutionally permitted. In situations in which the long-arm
statute can be satisfied, the petitioner (either the obligor or the obligee) has two options: (1)
utilize the long-arm statute to obtain personal jurisdiction over the respondent, or (2) initiate a
two-state proceeding under the succeeding provisions of UIFSA seeking to establish a support
order in the respondent’s state of residence. Of course, a third option is available that does not
implicate UIFSA; a petitioner may initiate a proceeding in the respondent’s state of residence by
filing a proceeding to settle all issues between the parties in a single proceeding.
Although this long-arm statute applies to a spousal-support order, almost all of the
specific provisions of this section relate to a child-support order or a determination of parentage.
This derives from the fact that the focus of UIFSA is primarily on child support. Only
subsections (1), (2), and (8) are applicable to an action for spousal support asserting long-arm
jurisdiction over a nonresident. The first two subsections are wholly noncontroversial insofar as
an assertion of personal jurisdiction is concerned. Moreover, as a practical matter, an assertion of
personal jurisdiction under UIFSA will almost always also yield jurisdiction over all matters to
be decided between the spouses, including division of property on divorce. Thus, the most
obvious possible basis for asserting long-arm jurisdiction over spousal support, i.e., “last
matrimonial domicile,” is not included in Section 201 to avoid the potential problem of another
instance of bifurcated jurisdiction. This restraint avoids a situation in which UIFSA would
arguably grant long-arm jurisdiction for a spousal-support order when the forum state has no
correlative statute for property division in divorce.
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