KY Mom Can Have TN Custody Order Set Aside Due to Fraud
- At March 28, 2022
- By Miles Mason
- In Child Custody, Family Law
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Tennessee child custody jurisdiction case summary.
KY Mom Can Have TN Custody Order Set Aside Due to Fraud
The parents in this Montgomery County, Tennessee, case were never married. After they separated, the mother and child moved in with the grandmother in Kentucky, and the father moved to Tennessee. In 2015, a Kentucky court awarded mother sole custody, granted the father parenting time every other weekend, and ordered him to pay child support.
In 2019, the mother contacted the father for help, and they signed a modified parenting plan. The mother alleged that this was done under duress, because the father said that the child couldn’t be enrolled in school in Tennessee without the documents.
Mother believed the change was temporary, but the father filed a petition in Tennessee to domesticate and modify the Kentucky decree. That petition alleged that the father and child had been residents of Tennessee for more than six months, but it had only been a few days. The court granted the petition. A few months later, the mother moved to set it aside on the grounds of fraud and lack of subject matter jurisdiction, due to the misrepresentation of length of residence.
The court denied the mother’s motion, and she made a second motion, alleging a clear error of law in the first order. This was also denied. The court held that by signing the agreed order, the mother had waived any objections to jurisdiction in Tennessee. The lower court, however, did not address the mother’s argument of fraud.
The mother then appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals, which first pointed out that an agreement of the parties cannot confer subject matter jurisdiction upon a court. Under the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act (UCCJEA), the court must first make an initial determination of jurisdiction, and that had not been done. The next step is to review the statutory factors to be applied. In this case, the proper procedure would have involved the Kentucky court giving up its jurisdiction, and that had not happened.
In this case, there might have been minimal jurisdiction due to the fact that the petition claimed 180 days residence. But the lower court should have gone further and considered the mother’s allegation that this was fraudulent. For these reason, the Court of Appeals held that the decision refusing to set aside the judgment must be vacated. And since the mother was never allowed to prove that allegation of fraud, the case was reversed and remanded for further proceedings.
No. M2020-01487-COA-R3-JV (Tenn. Ct. App. Feb. 3, 2022).
See original opinion for exact language. Legal citations omitted.
To learn more, see Child Custody Laws in Tennessee and our video, How is child custody determined in Tennessee?
See also Tennessee Parenting Plans and Child Support Worksheets: Building a Constructive Future for Your Family featuring examples of parenting plans and child support worksheets from real cases available on Amazon.com.
