Souza

This case presents a conflict between lawsuits determining custody: the stepparent adoption brought by the mother and her husband in the Santa Cruz County Superior Court, and the action to establish visitation and custodial rights brought by the father in a Hawaiian court. The Hawaiian court was the first tribunal to make custody determinations regarding the child, the parties’ five-year-old daughter Janel. The father has sought a writ of mandate to order the Santa Cruz Superior Court either to dismiss the stepparent adoption in deference to the primary jurisdiction of Hawaii, or alternatively to communicate with that tribunal in resolving the main issues here, which are (1) which tribunal should hear the matter; and (2) whether the father has abandoned the child, or whether instead she was concealed from him over the past four years. The latter question, whether there was abandonment, will determine both whether Hawaii has primary jurisdiction, and whether a stepparent adoption may go forward. We have concluded, for reasons we shall state, that the Santa Cruz court should have applied the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act (UCCJA, Civ. Code, §5150 et seq.) and the…