I recently posted about one of my cases in which the court ruled in favor of my client, the father, by denying the mother’s attempt to relocate the parties’ child out of Arizona.\u00a0 Today another of my clients, also a father, obtained a favorable ruling on a similar issue — change of venue.\u00a0\u00a0 Although venue, child relocation and child custody jurisdiction are all different legal concepts, I believe they are all connected by a common thread — the territorial nature of family court judges.<\/p>\n
When we talk about “venue” in\u00a0Arizona divorce and family cases,\u00a0we’re usually talking about the county in which the case should be filed.\u00a0 By statute (A.R.S. Sec. 12-401), Arizona divorce and legal separation actions are to be filed in the county where the petitioner (filing party) resides at the time of filing.<\/p>\n
In the venue case we won today,\u00a0 my client (“Father”) and his wife (“Mother”) had resided together for years in Pinal County. \u00a0Mother secretly planned to move herself and the children to Maricopa County and to file for divorce there.\u00a0 In furtherance of this plan, Mother leased a house in Maricopa County unbeknownst to Father.\u00a0 After\u00a0Mother leased the house but before she moved in, Mother filed for divorce in Maricopa County.\u00a0 Simultaneously, Father filed for divorce in Pinal County.\u00a0 Approximately two weeks later, Mother moved the children to Maricopa County and enrolled them in a new school there without\u00a0 <\/em>Father’s consent.\u00a0 Father filed a motion with the Maricopa County judge to change the venue to Pinal County.\u00a0 Over Mother’s objection, the Maricopa County judge today ruled in Father’s favor, dismissing the Maricopa County case and ordering that Father’s case proceed in Pinal County.<\/p>\n I was surprised by the judge’s ruling in one respect–the grounds cited by the judge for his decision.\u00a0 The only\u00a0basis the judge needed to cite to support his decision was the fact that Mother was not a resident of Maricopa County at the time she filed her divorce case there\u00a0and that\u00a0the proper venue\u00a0therefore was Pinal County under A.R.S. Section 12-401.\u00a0 Instead, the judge chose to mention several other factors, including the\u00a0fact that\u00a0Father did not consent to Mother’s moving herself and the children to Maricopa County and the fact that most of the evidence surrounding the children’s best interests would be found in Pinal County.<\/p>\n In my opinion, the underlying\u00a0reason for this venue ruling is the same reason most child relocation cases and some child custody jurisdiction cases are decided the way they are.\u00a0 I believe family court judges are territorial in cases involving children, and rightly so in my opinion.\u00a0 They know when a child case is on their turf and when it’s not–when a child is their responsibility or that of another judge.\u00a0 In child cases, they are particularly\u00a0concerned that the judge whose territory it is\u00a0to make the orders regarding the children get and keep control of that case.\u00a0 When judges feel a child case is their responsibility–their territory–they are determined to keep control over that case and take care of those children.\u00a0 I think the Maricopa County judge in my venue case\u00a0properly saw that this case fell\u00a0squarely into the territory of the Pinal County Court, and that’s where he sent it.<\/p>\n This may also\u00a0be\u00a0a\u00a0major\u00a0reason why most judges, having made prior orders regarding a child, are reluctant to let one parent relocate with that child to another state where, in time, \u00a0the Arizona judge may <\/em>no longer be able to oversee the case and insure that the child’s best interests are met.<\/p>\n The same concept applies to certain child custody jurisdiction cases–cases where one state has issued child custody orders and later one parent tries to move the child custody jurisdiction to\u00a0a different state.\u00a0 In a recent case, the Arizona Court of Appeals affirmed\u00a0the trial court’s decision to retain Arizona \u00a0jurisdiction over a child custody case even when the mother had been in New Mexico with the child for over two years.\u00a0 The mother in that case had\u00a0left Arizona without the father’s consent, had evaded service of court papers, and had essentially tried to skirt the authority of the Arizona court who had made the original child custody orders in the case.\u00a0 Mangan v. Mangan<\/em>, 1 CA-CV 10-0726A (Ariz. Ct. App., 5\/26\/11).\u00a0 This didn’t sit well with the Arizona judge, who properly ruled that the jurisdiction would remain in Arizona until she, the judge <\/strong>decided to relinquish jurisdiction and no sooner.\u00a0 See A.R.S. 25-1032.\u00a0 \u00a0To emphasize her dissatisfaction with the mother’s efforts to circumvent Arizona jurisdiction, the judge ordered the mother to pay the father’s attorney’s fees even though the father earned more money than the mother.\u00a0 Id.<\/em><\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 2011 by Scoresby Family Law \u2013 J. Kyle Scoresby, P.C. All rights reserved<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I recently posted about one of my cases in which the court ruled in favor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[119],"tags":[48,54],"class_list":["post-612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-relocation-with-children","tag-family-court-judges","tag-jurisdiction"],"yoast_head":"\n