In re the Marriage of: James Edward Cook, II, petitioner, Respondent,

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A17-0861

In re the Marriage of: James Edward Cook, II, petitioner,
Respondent,

vs.

Hitomi Arimitsu,
Appellant.

Filed January 22, 2018
Affirmed
Reyes, Judge

Hennepin County District Court
File No. 27-FA-15-499

Victoria M. B. Taylor, Crossroads Legal Services, St. Paul, Minnesota (for respondent)

Drake D. Metzger, Metzger & Nyberg, L.L.C., Minneapolis, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Peterson, Presiding Judge; Cleary, Chief Judge; and
Reyes, Judge.
S Y L L A B U S
I. Under the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act, a court
has home-state jurisdiction to make an initial child-custody determination if the state was
the home state of the child within six months before the commencement of the proceeding,
and the child is absent from the state but a parent or person acting as a parent continues to
live in this state. Fu rther, if a child is not in what would otherwise be the child’s home
state, the six-month period within which a parent can commence a custody proceeding in
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the state does not begin to run until that parent has reason to recognize the permanency of
the child’s absence from the state.
II. Substantial compliance with the notice requirements of Minn. Stat.
§ 518D.305 (2016) is sufficient to allow a Minnesota district court to confirm the
registration of a foreign custody determination.
O P I N I O N
REYES, Judge
Appellant-mother Hitomi Arimitsu, who cu rrently lives in Japan with the four
children she shares with respondent-father James Cook, asserts that the district court erred
in ruling that it had subject-matter jurisdiction over the parties’ child-custody dispute.
Mother argues that (1) the successor district court judge in this case should not have
reviewed a ruling by a predecessor district court judge that it la cked subject-matter
jurisdiction to address child custody; (2) the district court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction
under the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act (UCCJEA) to hear the
parties’ custody dispute; and (3) there was no proper registration of an order of a Japanese
court in the Minnesota District Court (district court). We conclude that the district court
did not err in its rulings. Therefore, we affirm.
FACTS
The parties married in 1998 and had twins in 2002 and again in 2008. In May 2014,
they listed their home for sale. In July 2014, in preparati on for a trip mother and the
children were to take to Japa n, the parties signed an agreem ent stating that mother would
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return with the children by August 29, 2014, af ter which mother and the children left for
Japan. July 2014 was the last time the children were in Minnesota.
In mid-August 2014, father agreed that the children c ould stay in Japan for an
unspecified additional amount of time, but not indefinitely. In October 2014, father visited
the children in Japan. In January 2015, father filed a summons and petition in district court
to dissolve the parties’ marr iage. Father’s summons and petition were served on mother
on April 27, 2015. At a July 23, 2015 initial case-manag ement conference (ICMC), the
district court asked the parties to address wh ether, given the children’s time in Japan, the
district court had subject-matter jurisdiction under the UCCJEA to address child custody.
On August 7, 2015, father applied unde r the Hague Convention of 25 October 1980
on the Civil Aspects of Intern ational Child Abduction (the Hague Convention) for aid in
getting the children returned to the United States. Twelve days later, father started Hague
litigation in Japan, asking the Japanese court to return the children to the United States.
On October 19, 2015, the district court filed its order arising from the ICMC, ruling
that, under the UCCJEA, Minnesota lacked subject-matter jurisdiction to address custody
because Minnesota was not the children’s home state. The district court acknowledged
that, under the UCCJEA, a child’s temporary absence from a state did not mean that the
state stopped being the child’s home state, but concluded that, on the then-existing record,
the absence of the children fro m Minnesota did not constitute a temporary absence. The
assigned judge subsequently retired and, in May 2016, the case was assigned to a successor
judge.
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On October 30, 2015, in the Hague litigation, a Japanese court ruled that the parties’
younger twins, but not the older twins, should be returned to the United States. Both parties
appealed this ruling, and, on January 28, 2016, a Japanese court ruled that all four children
should be returned to the United States. Mother appealed that ruling, but her appeal was
denied. Mother did not return any of the ch ildren to the United Stat es. Instead, in the
Japanese courts, she challenged father’s attempts to enforce the January 2016 Hague order
requiring the children to return to the United States.
In September 2016, father moved the distri ct court to reassert jurisdiction over the
question of child custody and to enforce the January 2016 Hague return order. By order
filed December 2, 2016, the district court granted these motions. The district court found,
based in part on what the parties and their attorneys said about Japanese law, that Japanese
courts were precluded from dissolving the parties’ marriage and from addressing custody
for four reasons: (1) the pendency of the Ha gue litigation; (2) the dissolution proceeding
pending in Minnesota; (3) father had not abandoned the family and his whereabouts were
known; and (4) the parties were still legally married.
Mother moved the district court for am ended findings, essentially asking it to
reverse the December 2016 ruling reasserti ng jurisdiction over th e question of child
custody. A hearing on mother’s motion occurred on February 10, 2017.
A week after that hearing, a Japanese c ourt filed an order ruling that the January
2016 Hague return order should not be enforced because (1) the children “refused strongly
to be returned to the U.S.[;]” (2) father’s home in the United States had been foreclosed
and the redemption period had expired withou t father redeeming the home; (3) father
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lacked the ability to provide th e children with a stable envi ronment in the United States;
and (4) mother cannot provide the children with a stable environment in the United States
because “she doesn’t have a basis to live in the U.S.” Six days la ter, father’s Minnesota
attorney sent a letter to the district court, stating that father was appealing the Japanese
court’s February 2017 order.
By order filed March 24, 2017, the district court found mother in contempt of court
for not returning the children to the United States and set pur ge conditions. On April 4,
2017, the district court filed an order denying mother’s motion for amended findings, and
ruling, among other things, that (1) the dist rict court had authority to reconsider the
jurisdictional ruling in the October 2015 order; (2) despite the February 2017 order of the
Japanese court, Minnesota currently has su bject-matter jurisdiction to address custody
because, among other reasons, Minnesota is the children’s home state under the UCCJEA;
and (3) the Japanese courts lack jurisdiction to address child custody.
Mother appealed, and, after this court questioned jurisdiction, it filed an order
construing the appeal to be from the December 2016 and April 2017 orders.
ISSUES
I. Did the successor district court judge err in reconsidering the jurisdictional
ruling made in the October 2015 order by the predecessor judge?
II. Did the district court err in ruling th at it had subject-matter jurisdiction to
address the parties’ child custody dispute?
III. Did the district court err by registeri ng the order of the Japanese court without
satisfying the requirements of the UCCJEA?
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ANALYSIS
I. The successor judg e was not precluded from reconsidering subject-
matter jurisdiction to address child custody.

Mother argues that, under Kornberg v. Kornberg, 542 N.W.2d 379 (Minn. 1996),
the successor judge could not reconsider whet her the district court had subject-matter
jurisdiction to decide child cu stody because father’s motion as king the district court to
readdress the point was filed after the expirati on of the time to file a motion for amended
findings of fact. We disagree.
“Parties should not be denied reconsider ation of a predecessor judge’s ruling by a
successor judge if reconsideration by the judge who made the original ruling would have
been permissible.” Kornberg, 542 N.W.2d at 385. “The extent of a successor judge’s
authority to perform judicial duties is a question of law” which we review de novo. Id. at
384.
A motion for amended findings must be serv ed within 30 days of a party’s service
of notice of filing of the decision to be amende d. Minn. R. Civ. P. 52.02; 59.03. Also, a
motion for amended findings must be based on the record previously submitted to the
district court, and the district court “may neither go outside the record, nor consider new
evidence” when addressing the motion. Rathbun v. W.T. Grant Co., 300 Minn. 223, 238,
219 N.W.2d 641, 651 (1974); Zander v. Zander, 720 N.W.2d 360, 364 (Minn. App. 2006)
(quoting id.), review denied (Minn. Nov. 14, 2006).
Here, it is undisputed that father served his motion more than 30 days after mother
served him with notice of filing of the October 2015 order. It is also undisputed that father
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did not ask the district court to amend the findings in the October 2015 order based on the
record as it existed when the district court filed that order, but to “[m]odify” the October
2015 order based on the new evidence of the Japanese court’s January 2016 Hague return
order. Under these circumstances, we conclude that father did not seek amended findings
under rule 52.02, and hence his failure to satisfy that rule is not fatal to the district court’s
ability to address his motion.
The issue of subject-matter jurisdic tion “can be raised at any time in the
proceeding.” Tischer v. Hous. & Redev. Auth. of Cambridge, 693 N.W.2d 426, 430 (Minn.
2005). Further, if a case involves multiple claims for relief or multiple parties, any ruling
which adjudicates fewer than all the claims or the rights and
liabilities of fewer than all the parties shall not terminate the
action as to any of the claims or parties, and the order or other
form of decision is subject to revision at any time before the
entry of judgment adjudicating all the claims and the rights and
liabilities of all the parties.

Minn. R. Civ. P. 54.02. An exception to this rule exists if the district court includes in that
ruling an express determination that there is no just reason for delay and an express
direction that judgment be entered. Id.
Father’s petition to dissolve the parties’ marriage included nu merous claims for
relief, and the merits of none of those claims have been adjudicated. Further, the October
2015 order lacked the express determinati on mentioned in rule 54.02. Thus, if the
predecessor judge had still been presiding over the case, he would have had, and hence the
successor judge actually had, authority to revise the October 2015 ruling that the district
court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction to address child custody. See Buchman Plumbing
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Co. v. Regents of Univ. of Minn., 293 Minn. 437, 439, 196 N.W.2d 629, 630 (1972) (stating
that, when there was no expre ss determination under rule 54.02, the dismissal of a claim
as to one codefendant was “subject to revision in the trial of the remaining issues”); Strand
v. Ill. Farmers Ins. Co., 429 N.W.2d 266, 269 (Minn. A pp. 1988) (ruling that a judgment
stating that a party was entitled to benefits but not specifying the am ount of benefits was
not a final judgment absent language of rule 54.02).1
Mother also argues that the district court misread Engvall v. Soo Line R.R. Co., 605
N.W.2d 738 (Minn. 2000), to me an that father’s failure to appeal the October 2015 order
ruling precluded alteration of th at ruling at a later time. Engvall states that “[a]n
interlocutory judgment dismissing a party for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction is not
immediately appealable absent an express dete rmination by the district court that there is
no just reason for delay pursuant to Minn. R. Ci v. P. 54.02.” 605 N.W. 2d at 739. Here,
the October 2015 order lacks the express de termination mentioned in rule 54.02.
Therefore, that ruling was not appealable.2

1 While not specifically argued here, we note that, in dissolution matters, district courts can
grant relief from an existing ruling for the reasons listed in Minn. Stat. § 518.145, subd. 2
(2016).
2 Mother’s reply brief asserts that the di strict court’s revision of the October 2015
jurisdictional ruling violates the doctrine of law of the case. Mother’s failure to raise that
doctrine in her principal brief, however, means that the doctrine is not properly before this
court. Moorhead Econ. Dev. Auth. v. Anda, 789 N.W.2d 860, 887 (Minn. 2010); McIntire
v. State, 458 N.W.2d 714, 717 n.2 (Minn. App. 1990), review denied (Minn. Sept. 28,
1990). Moreover, law of the case “is not normally applied by a trial court to its own prior
decisions.” Loo v. Loo, 520 N.W.2d 740, 744 n.1 (Minn. 1994); see Kornberg, 542 N.W.2d
at 386 n.2 (citing this aspect of Loo). Thus, that doctrine wo uld not have precluded the
district court from revising the October 2015 order.
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II. The district court had subject-ma tter jurisdiction under the UCCJEA to
address child custody.

Mother challenges the district court’s ru ling that it had subject-matter jurisdiction
to make an initial child-custody determination on four grounds. We are not persuaded.
The UCCJEA provides four bases for a Minne sota court to have jurisdiction to make
an initial child-custody determination. Minn. Stat. § 518D.201(a) (2016). Application of
the UCCJEA “involves questions of subject-matter jurisdiction[,]” which appellate courts
review de novo. Schroeder v. Schroeder , 658 N.W.2d 909, 911 (M inn. App. 2003). A
district court’s underlying findings of fact, however, are not set aside unless they are clearly
erroneous. Minn. R. Civ. P. 52.01.
Home-state jurisdiction is one basis unde r the UCCJEA allowing Minnesota courts
to make an initial child- custody determination. Minn. Stat. § 518D.201(a)(1). A district
court has home-state jurisdiction if either (1) Minnesota “is the home state of the child on
the date of the commencement of the proceeding” or (2) Minnesota “was the home state of
the child within six months be fore the commencement of the proceeding and the child is
absent from this state but a pa rent or person acting as a pare nt continues to live in this
state[.]” Id. A marital-dissolution proceeding “[is] commenced by personal service of the
summons and petition.” Minn. Stat. § 518.09 (2016).
Here, father’s summons a nd petition to dissolve the parties’ marriage and seek
custody of the children was served on April 27, 2015. It is undisputed that, at present, the
children are absent from Minnesota, and father still lives in Minnesota. Under the second
option described above, the dist rict court has home-state jurisdiction to make an initial
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custody determination if Minnesota was the home state of the children on or after October
27, 2014, which was six months before the April 27, 2015 commencement of the
dissolution case.
A child’s home state is the state in which the child lived with a parent “for at least
six consecutive months immediately befo re the commencement of a child custody
proceeding[,]” and “[a] period of temporary absence [from the state] is part of the period.”
Minn. Stat. § 518D.102(h) (2016). It is undisputed that this case involves a child-custody
proceeding. See id. (e) (defining “child custody pro ceeding” for UCCJEA purposes to
include a proceeding in which custody or visitation is at issue). Thus, because the children
lived their entire lives in Minne sota before mother took th em to Japan in July 2014,
Minnesota would be the children’s home stat e if they were temporarily absent from
Minnesota on October 27, 2014.
There is limited caselaw addressing what constitutes a temporary absence from a
state under the UCCJEA. Comments to the U CCJEA, however, state that there is “no
substantive” difference between the definitions of “home state” in the UCCJEA and its
predecessor, the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act (UCCJA). UCCJEA § 102 cmt.
(amended 2017), 9 Pt. IA U.L.A. 659 (1999). Additionally, Minnesota courts “give great
weight to other states’ interpretations of a uniform law.” Johnson v. Murray, 648 N.W.2d
664, 670 (Minn. 2002) (making this statement in the contex t of construing the UCCJA);
see Minn. Stat. § 645.22 (2016) (stating that uniform laws “ shall be interpreted and
construed to effect their general purpose to make uniform the laws of those states which
enact them”). When addressing whether a ch ild’s absence from a state was “temporary”
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under the UCCJA, foreign caselaw allows courts to “consider the parents’ agreement and
their intent regarding the temporary or pe rmanent status of th e child’s out-of-state
absence.” In re Frost, 681 N.E.2d 1030, 1036 (Ill. Ct. App. 1997). Further,
[w]hile the child may have resided in the new state for a period
of six months or longer, the six-month period within which the
parent in the original state could file a custody action within
that state would not begin to run un til that parent had reason
to recognize the permanency of the out-of-state absence.

Id. at 1036 (emphasis added); see Ogawa v. Ogawa , 221 P.3d 699, 70 4-05 (Nev. 2009)
(using a similar analysis in a UCCJEA case).
Here, the district court discussed Frost and Ogawa, found that “by as early as
approximately December 2014, [father] was on notice that [mother] did not intend to return
the children to the U.S.[,]” and ruled that it had home-state jurisdiction. Because father
was not on notice that mother did not intend to return th e children until December 2014,
under Frost, Minnesota was the children’s home st ate on October 27, 2014, meaning that
the district court did not err by ruling that it had home-state jurisdiction to make an initial
child-custody determination.
Mother argues to the contrary, based on what she asserts is the finality of the district
court’s October 2015 order, and on the district court’s reading of an unpublished opinion
of this court. The former we rejected above. The latter is unpersuasive because the district
court did not base its home-state analysis on the unpublished opinion, but rather on Frost
and Ogawa. Mother does not challenge the applicability of those decisions to this case. In
light of the statute and caselaw encouragi ng Minnesota courts to read uniform laws
consistently with other states, we discern no reason why Minnesota would read its version
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of the UCCJEA differently than how sister states have read a substantively identical
provision of the UCCJEA. Thus, we concl ude that the district court had home-state
jurisdiction under the UCCJEA to make an initial child-custody determination.
Mother also argues that the district cour t’s conclusion in its April 2017 order that
Minnesota is the children’s home state appears to be based on “findings [by the Japanese
courts] that Minnesota was the children’s hab itual residence for pu rposes of the Hague
Convention.” Mother misreads the April 2017 order. The portion of the April 2017 order
referring to the children’s “habitual reside nce” under the Hague Convention addresses
whether Minnesota has jurisdiction to addr ess custody on a basis other than home-state
jurisdiction. But because we conclude that the district c ourt correctly ruled that it had
home-state jurisdiction to make an initial child-custody determination, we need not address
the other bases for its assertion of jurisdiction.3
III. Registration of the Jan uary 2016 Hague return order is not defective.
Mother argues that the district court faile d to provide her with adequate notice of
the process to register and confirm the January 2016 Hague return order pursuant to Minn.

3 Mother challenges a number of the district c ourt’s findings of fact, especially findings
supporting the district court’s assertion of jurisdiction on bases ot her than home-state
jurisdiction. While our conclusion that the district court has home-state jurisdiction means
that we need not address those other bases for the district court’s assertion of jurisdiction,
we have reviewed the record, and we are satisfied that the findings that mother challenges
are not clearly erroneous. See Wilson v. Moline, 234 Minn. 174, 182, 47 N.W.2d 865, 870
(1951) (stating that the function of an appellate court “does not require [it] to discuss and
review in detail the evidence for the purpose of demonstrati ng that it supports the trial
court’s findings” and an appellate court’s “dut y is performed when [it] consider[s] all the
evidence, as we have done here, and determine[s] that it reasonably supports the findings”);
Peterka v. Peterka, 675 N.W.2d 353, 357-58 (Minn. App. 2004) (applying this aspect of
Wilson in a family law appeal).
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Stat. § 518D.305(b)(2), (c)(2) (2016), and therefore the registration must be vacated. We
disagree.
Father does not challenge mother’s asserti on that all of the statutory notices were
not given. Instead, he argues that any error is harmless because “[mother] had ample actual
notice and opportunity to dis pute the Hague Order” in subs equent proceedings but failed
to do so. See Minn. R. Civ. P. 61 (requiring harmless error to be ignored).
Factual disputes regarding the adequacy of notice are reviewed for clear error, while
the legal adequacy of any notice that may have been given is reviewed de novo. Minn. R.
Civ. P. 52.01 (factual questions); In re License of West Side Pawn , 587 N.W.2d 521, 522
(Minn. App. 1998) (legal adequacy of notice); see Benton v. Mut. of Omaha Ins. Co., 500
N.W.2d 158, 160 (Minn. App. 1993) (referring to different standards of review for legal
and factual questions regarding notice), review denied (Minn. July 19, 1993).
The process for registering foreign orders under the UCCJEA “parallels” the process
in the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act (UIFSA) “for the registration of child support
orders.” UCCJEA § 305 cm t. (amended 2017), 9 Pt. IA ULA 693 (1999). Under the
UIFSA, “‘substantial compliance’ with the registration requirements is sufficient.” Ex
Parte Reynolds, 209 So. 3d 1122, 1126 (Al. Civ. App. 2016); see UIFSA § 602 cmt. 9 Pt.
IB ULA B 243 (2008) (making this observation). Therefore, we conclude that substantial
compliance with the requirement s for registration and confirma tion of a foreign order is
sufficient under the UCCJEA.
Cases involving the Hague Convention “have not been included [in the UCCJEA’s
definition of ‘child-custody proceeding’] because custody of the child is not determined in
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a proceeding under the International Child Abductions Remedies Act. Those proceedings
are specifically included in Article 3 [of the UCCJEA regarding the] enforcement process.”
UCCJEA § 102 cmt., 9 Pt. IA ULA 659 (1999). Under the enforcement provisions of the
UCCJEA, “a court of this state may enforce an order for the return of the child made under
the [Hague Convention] as if it were a child custody determination.” Minn. Stat.
§ 518D.302 (2016). And a district court “s hall” confirm the registration of a foreign
custody order “unless[, in relevant part,] the person contesting registration establishes that
. . . the child custody determination sought to be registered has been vacated, stayed, or
modified by a court having jurisdiction to do so[.]” Id. (b)(2), (c)(2) (2016). The purpose
of the notification is to provide “ an opportunity to contest th e registration[,]” and notice
that failure to do so will result in conf irmation of the foreign order. Minn. Stat.
§ 518D.305(b)(2); (c)(2). Here, we conclude that there was substantial compliance with
the relevant requirements of the UCCJEA.
The question of registering the January 2016 Hague return order first arose at the
November 21, 2016 hearing when the district court raised the subject and sought input on
the point from both parties. On November 29, 2016, father filed documents for registration
pursuant to Minn. Stat. § 518D.305(a) (2016). The reasons a district court may refuse to
confirm the registration of a foreign order are listed in Minn. Stat. § 518D.305(d). Mother,
however, made no objection under this statute.
Finally, we note that Stone v. Stone, 636 N.W.2d 594, 597 (Minn. App. 2001), on
which mother relies, is distinguishable from this case. There, appellant “attempted to
register the [foreign] orders under [UIFSA,]” did not seek registration under the UCCJEA,
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and did not assert the existe nce of a custody dispute. Id. at 598. Here, the district court
was focused on (and even solicited input from the parties regarding) registration under the
UCCJEA, and a custody dispute does exist.
U nder these circumstances, we will not gr ant relief regarding registration of the
January 2016 Hague return order.
D E C I S I O N
The successor district court judge had au thority to reconsider her predecessor’s
ruling that the Minnesota court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction to address child custody.
Because father did not have r eason to believe that his child ren were permanently absent
from Minnesota at least six months before he commenced this dissolution proceeding, the
district court has home-state jurisdiction to make an initial child-cus tody determination.
Finally, the district court did not err by confirming registration of the January 2016 Hague
return order.
Affirmed.