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RCW 26.27.051

International application of chapter.

Applied in 7 court decisions — leading case In Re Marriage of Kowalewski (2008)

Most recently applied in In re Long (July 2018)

2021 c 23 s 1; 2001 c 65 s 105.

How often courts cite this section

20042010201820
citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

(1) A court of this state shall treat a foreign country as if it were a state of the United States for the purpose of applying Articles 1 and 2.

(2) Except as otherwise provided in subsection (3) or (4) of this section, a child custody determination made in a foreign country under factual circumstances in substantial conformity with the jurisdictional standards of this chapter must be recognized and enforced under Article 3.

(3) A court of this state need not apply this chapter if the child custody law of a foreign country violates fundamental principles of human rights.

(4) A court of this state need not apply this chapter if the law of a foreign country holds that apostasy, or a sincerely held religious belief or practice, or homosexuality are punishable by death, and a parent or child may be at demonstrable risk of being subject to such laws. For the purposes of this subsection, "apostasy" means the abandonment or renunciation of a religious or political belief.

Official source: Washington State Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Washington statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.