Jeremy J. Herrmann v. Kelly N. Herrmann

This case concerns whether interstate custody procedures may be used to deprive a parent of meaningful contact with his children without the basic process the Fourteenth Amendment requires. The question is not whether this Court should reweigh custody factors. The question is whether a State may accept and enforce custody jurisdiction after an unrecorded judge-to-judge handoff, while the affected parent, is not given a meaningful pre-decision opportunity to present jurisdictional facts and legal argument, and then defend the result through a later domestic­ violence relocation rationale that was not the jurisdictional basis when the forum was selected. Whether the Fourteenth Amendment permits state courts to transfer, accept, and enforce interstate child-custody jurisdiction through an unrecorded judge-to-judge communication, without giving the affected parent a meaningful pre-decision opportunity to present jurisdictional facts and legal argument, where the receiving court proceeds with trial while jurisdiction remains contested, later relies on a post hoc domestic-violence relocation rationale not used as the original jurisdictional basis, and the resulting orders functionally destroy meaningful parent-child contact.