I want to talk to you about child custody jurisdiction.  This has come up for me a couple times actually in the last week and it's a kind of an important topic.  If you haven’t heard of the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act you need to learn about it.  It is also known in the legal world as UCCJEA.   It's an act that governs jurisdiction of child custody disputes and as I understand it all states except for one state subscribe to the UCCJEA.   

This is actually something I just learned a couple of days ago because I was consulting with one of my Command the Courtroom viewers who happens to have a case in Arizona.   She lives in Boston but the case was originated in Arizona and apparently Massachusetts does not subscribe to the UCCJEA.   The UCCJEA governs how jurisdiction is established and generally speaking in order for jurisdiction to be established in a place you and your children notably actually...

I want to talk to you about undoing a child custody order that you had no knowledge about. In past videos I’ve talked about the importance of giving a party notice when you are filing an action in court or when you are asking the court to do something. You can give a party notice by serving them with the paperwork and depending on where you live, there are different ways that you can serve a party.

You can serve them by way of process server, you can have them accept service, or in many cases you can serve them with certified mail return receipt requested. But there are going to be cases where service or notice slips through the cracks.

There is actually someone really close to me in my life that had a case where his children’s names were changed while he was living in another country. He never received notice that this action was pending.

What should you do if this happens to you?

The first thing you should do is go to the Rules of Procedure wherever you live. If you...