States doesn’t recognize other state custody orders all the time. I have a friend who had Florida ignore his custody order from Virginia and then when he got the kids from Florida, Virginia was still charging him child support and would not recognize the Florida order for a while. However, I see what you are saying, the Virginia Court didn’t have the right argument in front of it. What Miller should have done was transfer the custody to Virginia first and did what she needed to do. Most of the time, the location of the child is where you can file anytime. I don’t have a pacer account, so I haven’t seen the judgement that was handed down.
Part of the problem in this case is that it appears when they first “divorced”, there was no issue with child custody. The natural mother was granted full custody, and the other woman was given visitation, and while the two parties disagree about the frequency visitations actually took place, it appears they were both in agreement on the visitation arrangement, which they jointly entered in a Vermont court.
Note that the natural mother couldn’t do this in Virginia, since Virginia did not recognize the civil union. Since she had entered the civil union in Vermont, she had to divorce in Vermont, and when they did so, that entered a child custody agreement in Vermont, which both parents agreed to.
So when Lisa decided she didn’t want to allow Jenkins any more visitation rights, she was going to have to challenge an arrangement she had approved in Vermont, which is probably why things went as they did in Virginia.
I had hoped that Virginia law would trump Vermont’s. I still believe it COULD have done so. But having read reports about the cases and judgments, I have trouble finding anything wrong with either of the two court rulings.
Which is why I find it offensive that so many here are slandering the judges in the case by calling them “child molesters”.