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Parental Child-Snatching: Out Of A No-Man's-Land Of Law., Wayne Young

St. Mary's Law Journal

Approximately 100,000 parental child-snatchings occur annually. When a parent takes a kidnapped child to another jurisdiction, the injured parent must convince the court to recognize a foreign custody decree and persuade the same court to enforce that decree. Congress enacted the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act (UCCJA) to eliminate relitigation of custody decrees in other states and end court practices which protect the kidnapping parent. However, the UCCJA does not resolve parental child-snatching because the Act is ineffective in non-adopting states and the Act fails to aid a state in locating the abducting parent. Non-UCCJA states such as Texas have …