Case Update (24 June 2026): Alvarez v. Rubiera; What is a Foreign Country under UIFSA?
The parties are parents to one child. In July 2016, they divorced in the Dominican Republic (DR). The divorce decree included an order that the Father make monthly child support payments. In November 2021, the DR court issued another order requiring him to make payments of support arrears from the prior several months. The Mother and child then moved to the USA, where she registered the divorce decree in Florida. In June 2024, she registered it in New York. At that time, she petitioned for arrears and an upward modification of the Father’s child support obligation. The Father sought to vacate the registration of the DR order. The Support Magistrate granted the Father’s motion to vacate, and therefore dismissed the case. The Mother filed objections to the Support Magistrate’s order. In January 2025, the Family Court denied the Mother’s objections. She appealed to the Supreme Court.
This appellate opinion is a little devoid of explanation, so this post fills in some of the blanks. The Supreme Court correctly noted that New York has enacted the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act. It quotes portions of the act, and precedent in NY, that a support order issued in another country may be registered in NY for enforcement. The Supreme Court then stated that a “foreign support order” means a “support order of a foreign tribunal.” This comes right from the definitions in UIFSA. Citing further to UIFSA, a foreign “tribunal” is a “court, administrative agency or quasi-judicial entity of a foreign country which is authorized to establish, enforce or modify support orders, or to determine parentage of a child.” This is where a void in the analysis comes in. Under UIFSA’s definitions, a foreign country can be one of several things. It can be a foreign reciprocating country. It can be a country with an established reciprocal arrangement with NY. It can be a country where the Hague Maintenance Convention is the controlling law. Or, it can be a country that has laws substantially similar to New York. In this case, the Supreme Court, without stating how it arrived at this conclusion, stated that the DR is a “foreign reciprocating country.” It cited to the HHS website. If one goes to the HHS website today, and looks at the DR’s designation, it actually says it is a Convention Country (a Contracting State under the Hague Maintenance Convention). This may cause one to be confused - why would the NY Supreme Court call it a Foreign Reciprocating Country when it is, in fact, a Convention Country? A Convention Country’s orders are examined differently than those of a FRC, and fall under a different section of UIFSA. The key to this analysis are the dates - specifically, September 11, 2024 (when the Support Magistrate granted the Father’s petition) and January 21, 2025 (the date the Family Court denied the Mother’s objections). Both of those dates are before March 23, 2025 (the date the Hague Maintenance Convention entered into force for the DR). Therefore, the Supreme Court concluded that, on those dates, the DR was a Foreign Reciprocating Country, and not yet a Convention Country.
Therefore, the Supreme Court opined that the Father did not make out any argument to contest the validity of the order of a Foreign Reciprocating Country under Fam. Ct. Act 580-607(a).
The HHS website is tricky. The Court included the hyperlink to the page it referred to, and it is clear why that is confusing. A good page to look at is here: this is the Intergovernmental Reference Guide for HHS. Go to the bottom, click on International, and use the drop down menu. The DR clearly is listed under Convention countries. If you click on the DR, it takes you to some useful information, including contact details. But you may also need to refer to the Hague Conference’s website, particularly, for this opinion, its Status Table.
Ultimately, the opinion is short - 3 pages. I rarely like longer opinions, but this one may have benefited from a tiny bit more elaboration.
