Vaughn v. Vaughn

481 P.3d 932, 308 Or. App. 619
Court of Appeals of Oregon·Decided January 21, 2021·No. A167919·Published·Cited by 2 cases

Opinion

Submitted January 4, 2019, reversed and remanded January 21, 2021

Shirley VAUGHN, Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

Donald VAUGHN, Respondent-Respondent.

Multnomah County Circuit Court 17DR08795; A167919

481 P3d 932

Daughter, an adult, appeals a judgment dismissing her petition for support from father, a resident of Nebraska, after the trial court granted father’s motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. Daughter argues that Oregon’s version of the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act grants jurisdiction in this matter because, in part, daughter and father previously resided together in Oregon. Additionally, daughter argues that extending jurisdiction in this case would comport with due process under the United States Constitution. Held: The trial court erred. Father’s unilateral decision to cut ties with this state did not preclude jurisdiction as to matters arising out of his significant contacts with Oregon, including living with and raising daughter here.

Reversed and remanded.

Patricia L. McGuire, Judge. Benjamin M. Karlin filed the brief for appellant. Lynn Shepard filed the brief for respondent. Before DeHoog, Presiding Judge, and Aoyagi, Judge, and Kamins, Judge.

DeHOOG, P. J. Reversed and remanded.

620 Vaughn v. Vaughn

DeHOOG, P. J.,

Daughter, an adult, appeals a judgment dismissing her petition under ORS 109.010 for support from father, a resident of Nebraska, after the trial court granted father’s motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. On appeal, daughter argues that there is a statutory basis for personal jurisdiction and that extending jurisdiction over father would comport with due process and the United States Constitution. Father contends that he lacks the requisite minimum contacts with Oregon for the trial court to have jurisdiction over him. We agree with daughter and, accordingly, reverse.

When reviewing the dismissal of a matter for lack of personal jurisdiction, and, as here, “the historical facts are undisputed, we review for legal error the trial court’s determination whether those facts establish personal jurisdiction over” the nonresident party. Swank v. Terex Utilities, Inc., 274 Or App 47, 50, 360 P3d 586 (2015), rev den, 358 Or 551 (2016). We begin by summarizing those facts.

Daughter was born in 1993, and father adopted daughter in 1996, while he was married to mother. The family lived together in Oregon until mother and father divorced in 2000. Father remained in Oregon and paid support for daughter until 2002, at which point he moved to Nebraska. He has lived in Nebraska since 2002. While in Nebraska, father continued to make support payments for daughter until 2014, when daughter no longer qualified as a “[c]hild attending school” under ORS 107.108.1 At that time, citing daughter’s mental health disabilities, mother initiated a proceeding in Oregon against father in an attempt to modify their divorce judgment and obtain support for daughter as an adult under ORS 109.010.2 Vaughn and Vaughn, 275 Or App 533, 534, 365 P3d 620 (2015). The trial court

1 Subject to other requirements, ORS 107.108 allows for child support when the child is attending school and “[i]s 18 years of age or older and under 21 years of age.” ORS 107.108(1)(a)(B).

2 ORS 109.010 provides that “[p]arents are bound to maintain their children who are poor and unable to work to maintain themselves; and children are bound to maintain their parents in like circumstances.”

Cite as 308 Or App 619 (2021) 621

dismissed the case for lack of personal jurisdiction. Id. at 535. On appeal, we reversed and explained:

“Personal jurisdiction continues for a motion that is captioned in relation to the dissolution judgment, but we do not imply, nor decide, that it is proper to seek relief under ORS 109.010 as if it were a matter modifying a past dissolution judgment. See ORS 107.135(1)(a) (vacation or modification of a judgment for ‘minor children and * * * children attending school’). Nor do we decide whether it might be necessary for a party to initiate a separate proceeding to seek support for an adult child under ORS 109.010 and, necessarily, effect anew personal jurisdiction for that proceeding.”

Id. at 537 (omission in original). On remand, no support was ordered.

This family comes before us again after daughter initiated a separate proceeding to establish a support order under ORS 109.010.3 Father disputed personal jurisdiction and moved to dismiss daughter’s petition. See ORCP 21 A(2) (authorizing motions to dismiss for “lack of jurisdiction over the person”). In response to father’s motion, daughter argued, in part, that the court had personal jurisdiction under ORCP 4 B and ORS 110.518. ORCP 4 provides that an Oregon court “has jurisdiction over a party” under specific circumstances. ORCP 4 B, in turn, provides that a court has jurisdiction over a party “[i]n any action which may be brought under statutes or rules of this state that specifically confer grounds for personal jurisdiction over the defendant.” Daughter argued that ORS 110.518(1)(c) and (d) conferred such grounds as to father. ORS 110.518(1)—part of Oregon’s codification of the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act (UIFSA)—provides a list of instances where, “[i]n a proceeding to establish or enforce a support order or to determine parentage of a child, a tribunal of this state may exercise personal jurisdiction over a nonresident individual.” ORS 110.518(1)(c) and (d), respectively, provide that a court may exercise jurisdiction in that context when “[t]he individual resided with the child in this state” or “[t]he individual 3 Similar to the posture of the proceeding that was before us in 2015, we are only tasked with determining whether the court had personal jurisdiction over father in this proceeding, and we offer no opinion on the merits of daughter’s efforts to establish a support order under ORS 109.010.

622 Vaughn v. Vaughn

resided in this state and provided prenatal expenses or support for the child.”4 Father argued that, under ORCP 4 K(2),5 asserting personal jurisdiction over him was improper and would violate his due process rights because he lacked the requisite contacts with the State of Oregon.

The trial court granted father’s motion. Apparently accepting that daughter had established that the terms of ORS 110.518(1)(c) and (d) were satisfied, the court nonetheless rejected daughter’s argument that those statutes conferred jurisdiction, reasoning that the 2001 commentary to the UIFSA serves as legislative history and that it cautions that “an ‘overly literal construction’ of the statute could possibly overreach due process.” The court then determined that father “does not have sufficient minimum contacts with Oregon to make it fair to require him to defend the case in Oregon.” In reaching that conclusion, the court noted that the facts of this case are similar to those presented in Horn and Horn, 97 Or App 177, 775 P2d 338 (1989). The trial court subsequently issued a general judgment dismissing daughter ’s petition, which daughter now appeals.

On appeal, the parties reprise the arguments that they made in the trial court. In support of her argument that jurisdiction is valid under ORCP 4 B and ORS 110.518, daughter argues that the trial court overlooked aspects of the relevant UIFSA commentary. Daughter acknowledges that the commentary to the UIFSA cautions against “ ‘overly literal construction[s]’ ” of the statute, but she contends that the relevant commentary—specifically the commentary accompanying the 2008 amendments to the UIFSA—also contemplates extending jurisdiction in circumstances such as those present here. Daughter separately argues, as she did in the trial court, that personal jurisdiction is proper in this matter under the “catchall provision” of ORCP 4 L. See Robinson v. Harley-Davidson Motor Co., 354 Or 572, 576-77,

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Vaughn v. Vaughn, 481 P.3d 932, 308 Or. App. 619 (Or. Ct. App. 2021).

481 P.3d 932 (Vaughn v. Vaughn) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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