By Valerie Arnold

Minnesota lawmakers may be making improvements to our state laws concerning parental child abduction prevention.  In 2006, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform Laws promulgated the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act (UCAPA). The purpose of the UCAPA is to help deter parental child abductions by establishing uniform guidelines for identifying risk factors and preventative measures to deter parental child abductions.

To date, nine states plus the District of Columbia have adopted the UCAPA. During the 2009 legislative session, the UCAPA was introduced to the legislature of eight more states including Minnesota. The Minnesota bill, introduced to the House by Representatives Champion and Hayden, has been referred to the Committee on Public Safety Policy and Oversight for its consideration during the next legislative session. Representatives Champion and Hayden propose coding the new law as Minnesota Statutes, chapter 518E.

If the UCAPA is adopted in Minnesota, identification and prevention of parental child abductions will likely be significantly enhanced. While Minnesota courts currently enjoy broad discretion in managing custody cases with a risk for parental child abduction, the lack of uniform guidelines to analyze and address parental abduction cases is often a source of great frustration for parents, attorneys, and courts.  The UCAPA provides specific criteria for indentifying parental child abduction risk factors and provides a spectrum of preventative measures that will help the court to strike a balance between protecting the safety of the child and preserving the parent-child relationship.

Under our current laws, identification of risk factors and appropriate protective measures is in large part left in the hands of the litigants to articulate to and seek out from the court. In contrast, the UCAPA allows the court in a child custody proceeding to issue abduction prevention measures on its own motion if it finds evidence that there is a credible risk of abduction under the UCAPA guidelines.  In addition, access to abduction prevention measures will be enhanced by the adoption of UCAPA in Minnesota as it allows the Court to issue abduction prevention measures before and after custody determinations are made.