CUSTODY – UCCJEA – CHILD-SNATCHING REMEDIES – “INCURRED PERSONAL JURISDICTION” CLAIMS – IMMUNITY FOR PLAINTIFF. A wife coming from Belgium to get her wrongfully removed child back by invoking the UCCJEA in Harrison v. Harrison, 58 Va. App. 90, 706 S.E.2d 905 (4/5/11), had far better luck than did the father in Sasson v. Shenhar, who tried the same thing in the same local trial court, adding a Hague Convention claim as well, and was told he had incurred personal jurisdiction thereby, with all that that entails. The Court of Appeals finds the matter simple enough in this case involving Americans residing in Belgium — a wife who decided she would like to stay there, and a father who came here, didn’t return the children after a visit when wife came to claim them, and served her here with Virginia divorce papers when she came here to litigate for a UCCJEA claim. The fact situation was more complex than that, of course, with the children being registered for school in Belgium, numerous agreements having been signed on various aspects of this, wife’s trips back and forth to Virginia for husband’s benefit to arrange his new living situation, etc. But stripped down to its simple elements, as the Court of Appeals views it this time, the case involved a litigant coming here to appear in court to get her children back after the other parent’s refusal to return them after a scheduled visit, and service of Virginia pleadings on her while she was here for purposes of that litigation. That, the Court of Appeals declares, does not in any way confer personal jurisdiction upon Virginia over that litigant. The Court points of course to the specific immunity section of the UCCJEA, Code §20-146.8, and it finds no support for husband’s claims to the contrary in the long-arm statute, §8.01-328.1(A)(9). No doubt about the matter. The Court, in the unanimous opinion by Judge Alston, declares that the UCCJEA immunity provision means what it says: That a party who comes here to enforce a custody order or take part in a child custody proceeding does not incur personal jurisdiction here simply by having done that, nor by being physically present for purposes of participating. While some of the wife’s actions might have looked ambiguous, given the off-and-on vagaries of a couple’s emotional relationship, she was very careful never to do anything while here that might have indicated residing here or intending to do any official act here that would arguably take advantage of Virginia legal or governmental entities. Wife’s motivations in all of this might not have been the purest, as it appears she had acquired a boyfriend over there, but the husband’s efforts to argue it was wrong to sustain relevancy objections to testimony about her marital relationships were of course unsuccessful. That Wife deceived husband about her reasons for wanting to stay in Belgium was testimony that does not pass the long-established basic test for relevancy.
