Abuchaibe v. Abuchaibe, ___ So.2d ___, 26 FLR 1266 (Fla.App. 3/15/00).
UCCJA -- SIGNIFICANT CONNECTION vs. HOME STATE -- MOTHER'S RESIDENCE.
Merely having a parent who lives in Florida does not mean that the parent and child have a UCCJA Section 3 "significant connection" with that state, and so a Florida court should not have exercised jurisdiction over a child whose home state was Colombia. The child in this case was 33 months old, and had lived in Colombia for 22 of the 33 months of his life, and that was not at the time of filing but at the time of the trial court's initial custody ruling. The child had lived in Colombia with his father for the past 10 months. The mother was residing in Florida in order to get her resident alien status, and when she was given six days of visitation, she kept the child and refused to give him back.
This is an interesting contrast to the Miami family division ruling three months earlier, exercising jurisdiction on “no other state” and other grounds in a case where Cuba was the home state (Gonzalez v. Gonzalez Quintana, Fla. Circuit Court No. 00-00479 FC 29 (Family Division, Miami-Dade County 1/10/00)). That case was reversed
