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290 Ark. 366

Sandlin v. Sandlin

Supreme Court of Arkansas

Decided November 24, 1986

Supreme Court of Arkansas · decided 1986-11-24

Relies on Chancellor v. Chancellor

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1986-11-24

How this case has been cited

Cited by 16 later decisions — most recently November 2025

16 state decisions

6019861990200020102020decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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George Rose Smith, Justice.

¶1This appeal must be dismissed for want of an appealable order.

¶2The parties, both native Arkansans, were married in Montgomery County and lived at Mt. Ida for over ten years. They moved to Oklahoma with their three children. Upon their separation in 1983, the husband returned to Mt. Ida with the children. The wife remained in Oklahoma and obtained a divorce there and an award of custody. That decree, except as to the divorce, was set aside. The wife obtained a second award of custody in May, 1985. The children were still with the father in Arkansas.

¶3After the entry of the first Oklahoma decree the mother filed the present petition for custody, in Montgomery County. The matter lay dormant during further proceedings in Oklahoma. The father filed a separate petition to obtain an award of custody. The two cases were eventually consolidated by agreement. Both Arkansas and Oklahoma have adopted the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act. After a preliminary hearing on the issue of jurisdiction, the chancellor held that Arkansas is the “home state” of the children under the Uniform Act and that therefore the court was not required to give full faith and credit to the Oklahoma award of custody. Ark. Stat. Ann. § 34-2703 (Supp. 1985). The mother appeals from that order.

¶4 There is evidently no final order, for the main issue, that of custody, is yet to be decided. No proof on that issue has been taken. Even though an order of temporary custody is appealable, Chancellor v. Chancellor, 282 Ark. 227, 667 S.W.2d 950 (1984), there can be no appeal, as we held in that case, until the proof has been completed and the order entered. We raise the issue ourselves, the matter being jurisdictional.

¶5Appeal dismissed.

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