Virginia cannot gain jurisdiction to divide retirement by another state’s courts attempting to transfer jurisdiction over this subject to Virginia. Ramos-Fantauzzi v. Matos, Va. Ct. App. unpublished 2017. In that case, the parties had been divorced in Puerto Rico, and the husband had stipulated in the Puerto Rican court that the wife was “eligible for all the benefits” under the USFSPA, and also that the parties had been advised of the case of Deluca Roman v. Colon Nieves (which held that while the USFSPA allowed Puerto Rico to divide military retirement, it did not require it to, and that Puerto Rican law treats military retirement as separate property). The divorce decree quoted this stipulation, and listed several benefits the wife qualified for, such as commissary privileges and the survivor benefit.
Six years later, both parties were living in Virginia, and the wife sought and got a court order from the Puerto Rican court saying that jurisdiction and venue for her “pending claim” for 50% of the marital share of retirement, “pursuant to” the divorce order and the USFSPA, was transferred to the courts of Virginia. The husband objected to this. In Virginia, a circuit court accepted jurisdiction and divided the pension. It claimed to be acting under the Uniform Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act (“UEFJA”), Code §§ 8.01-465.1 to -465.5.
The Court of Appeals reversed, saying that dividing the pension was not enforcement, because the Puerto Rican orders had not divided it, or given the wife a right to a specific share of it. Nor could Virginia use jurisdiction under the USFSPA to divide the pension, because subject matter jurisdiction cannot be conferred by another state’s court order, except where the statute that controls subject matter jurisdiction allows for such a transfer or deferral. Nor does any statute allow transfer of venue from another state.