## Facts

- Jose Silvestre Tronacao Canderas lived with Ana Christina Fernandes Ribeiro in Portugal, where they had a child.
- Canderas later moved to New Jersey; Ribeiro and the child later moved to Luxembourg.
- Canderas never traveled to Luxembourg and did not conduct business there or own property there.
- A Luxembourg court of conciliation issued a summons to Canderas, advising that Ribeiro sought a child-support order and that a hearing was scheduled.
- Canderas did not appear in Luxembourg, and the Luxembourg tribunal entered a default child-support order against him.
- Ribeiro’s attorney submitted the Luxembourg support order to New Jersey’s Central Registry of Child Support Enforcement Services for registration and enforcement under New Jersey’s interstate support enforcement procedures, including UIFSA.
- The matter was assigned to the Superior Court of New Jersey (Family Part).
- Canderas moved to dismiss, arguing the Luxembourg tribunal lacked personal jurisdiction over him and that New Jersey therefore should not enforce the Luxembourg order.

## Issues

1. Whether New Jersey could register and enforce a Luxembourg child-support order through its statutory interstate support enforcement framework when Luxembourg was not shown to qualify for treatment as a reciprocating or equivalent jurisdiction.
2. Whether, apart from any statutory enforcement mechanism, New Jersey should recognize and enforce the Luxembourg default support order as a matter of comity despite the absence of minimum-contacts style personal jurisdiction over Canderas.

## Decision

- The court granted Canderas’s motion to dismiss the enforcement proceeding.
- The court refused to enforce the Luxembourg child-support default order in New Jersey.
- The court concluded that Luxembourg had not been shown to fall within a statutory category that would require or authorize New Jersey to enforce the order on a reciprocal or equivalent basis.
- The court also declined to recognize the Luxembourg order under comity because the foreign proceeding did not establish personal jurisdiction over Canderas consistent with due process standards applied in New Jersey.

## Legal Principles

- Registration and enforcement of out-of-jurisdiction support orders is available only when statutory requirements for recognition are met; a foreign country’s order is not enforced automatically.
- A support order may be resisted at the enforcement stage on jurisdictional grounds, including the issuing tribunal’s lack of personal jurisdiction over the obligor.
- Comity is discretionary and generally depends on a showing that the foreign tribunal was competent, that the procedures provided notice and a fair chance to be heard, and that the judgment rests on a jurisdictional basis acceptable under forum due process norms.
- Actual notice of a foreign proceeding, by itself, does not supply personal jurisdiction when the defendant lacks meaningful ties to the foreign forum and the forum’s method of exercising authority does not match minimum-contacts style fairness standards used by New Jersey courts.
- When a foreign support order is not enforceable through statute or comity, the requesting party may need to seek support relief through a new proceeding in the forum that has jurisdiction over the obligor.

## Conclusion

The New Jersey Family Part declined to register and enforce Luxembourg’s default child-support order against a New Jersey resident because Luxembourg was not shown to qualify under New Jersey’s statutory framework for foreign enforcement, and comity did not apply where the Luxembourg tribunal lacked personal jurisdiction over the obligor under due process standards recognized in New Jersey.


Country of Luxembourg, on behalf of Ana Ribeiro v. Canderas, 768 A.2d 283 (2000)