Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 108 Part 5.djvu/573

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PUBLIC LAW 103-383—OCT. 20, 1994 108 STAT. 4063 Public Law 103-383 103d Congress An Act To provide that a State court may not modify an order of another State court requiring the payment of child support unless the recipient of child support payments resides in the State in which the modification is sought or consents to the seeking of the modification in that court. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the "Full Faith and Credit for Child Support Orders Act". SEC. 2. FINDINGS AND PURPOSES. (a) FINDINGS. — The Congress finds that— (1) there is a large and growing number of child support cases annually involving disputes between parents who reside in different States; (2) the laws by which the courts of different jurisdictions determine their authority to establish child support orders are not uniform; (3) those laws, along with the limits imposed by the Federal system on the authority of each State to take certain actions outside its own boundaries— (A) encourage noncustodial parents to relocate outside the States where their children and the custodial parents reside to avoid the jurisdiction of the courts of such States, resulting in an increase in the amount of interstate travel and communication required to establish and collect on child support orders and a burden on custodial parents that is expensive, time consuming, and disruptive of occupations and commercial activity; (B) contribute to the pressing problem of relatively low levels of child support payments in interstate cases and to inequities in child support payments levels that are based solely on the noncustodial parent's choice of residence; (C) encourage a disregard of court orders resulting in massive arrearages nationwide; (D) allow noncustodial parents to avoid the payment of regularly scheduled child support payments for extensive periods of time, resulting in substantial hardship for the children for whom support is due and for their custodians; and Oct. 20, 1994 [S. 922] Full Faith and Credit for Child Support Orders Act 28 ilSC 1 note. 28 USC 1738B note. 99-139 O - 94 (383)