ALEXIS ALUISE AND ANDREW ALUISE

v.

GLENDA SPANOS

FIFTH DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL

STATE OF FLORIDA

_____________________________ Case No. 5D2024-3376 L.T. Case No. 2022-DR-008269-FM _____________________________ ALEXIS ALUISE and ANDREW ALUISE, Appellants, v. GLENDA SPANOS, Appellee. _____________________________ On appeal from the Circuit Court for Duval County. Russell L. Healey, Judge. David S. DeLugas, of National Association of Parents, Inc. d/b/a Parents USA, Atlanta, Georgia, for Appellants. No Appearance for Appellee. October 24, 2025

MACIVER, J.

Alexis Aluise and Andrew Aluise (“Parents”) appeal an order dismissing their petition for modification of a final order from Pennsylvania for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction and an order

I.

Alexis Aluise is the biological mother of the child, J.R., born in September 2016. The child’s biological father passed away in 2019. The mother married Andrew Aluise in October 2020, and he adopted the child in March 2021. Appellee, Glenda Spanos—the deceased biological father’s mother (“Grandmother”)—brought an action for grandparent’s rights in the Court of Common Pleas in Butler County, Pennsylvania. Parents and the child moved from Pennsylvania to Jacksonville, Florida in July 2021, and Grandmother remained in Pennsylvania. Six months later, in January 2022, a Final Order, consented to by all the parties, was entered in the Court of Common Pleas (the “Pennsylvania Order”). The Pennsylvania Order provided that Parents would “retain sole legal and primary physical custody [of the child] subject to Grandmother’s partial physical custody as set forth hereafter.” A graduating schedule was established for Grandmother to exercise custody of the child at Grandmother’s sister’s home in Tampa, which by the year 2024 consisted of five weekends per year plus one week while the child was on summer break from school. Whenever Parents returned to Pennsylvania— at least once per year—they were ordered to give Grandmother seven days’ advance notice and provide Grandmother visits at her home with the child, from four to eight hours depending on the length of Parents’ trip. Grandmother was granted weekly fifteenminute video calls with the child, and Parents were ordered to 1 As an initial observation, we are troubled by the quality of the briefing put forth by Parents’ pro hac vice attorney. Parents present numerous arguments comprised of largely flawed and misleading statements of law and inaccurate citations. Nonetheless, notwithstanding the wholly inadequate presentation of their case, they are correct that the court below erred on the question of jurisdiction.

II.

We review the trial court’s dismissal de novo. Mattingly v. Hatfield, 395 So. 3d 585, 589 (Fla. 1st DCA 2024). We also review de novo the trial court’s ruling on subject-matter jurisdiction and interpretation and application of a statute. McGovern v. Clark, 298 So. 3d 1244, 1248 (Fla. 5th DCA 2020). As noted by the trial court, the right to grandparent visitation is broader in Pennsylvania than it is in Florida. Compare 23 Pa. C.S.A. § 5325 (where a parent of the child is deceased, a parent of the deceased parent may file an action for partial physical custody of the child), with section 752.011, Fla. Stat., (the grandparent visitation statute). Section 752.011 provides limited circumstances under which grandparents may petition for visitation, such as when one parent is deceased, missing, or in a vegetative state, and the other parent poses a substantial threat to the child’s welfare. But section 752.011 does not apply to the enforcement of foreign visitation orders, it applies to petitions initiated in Florida courts. The domestication and enforcement of foreign visitation orders involving grandparents are subject to Florida’s obligations under the Full Faith and Credit Clause² and the UCCJEA, codified in Florida in Chapter 61, Part II, Florida Statutes.³ Foreign orders granting grandparent visitation have been upheld in Florida. For instance, in Ledoux-Nottingham v. Downs, 210 So. 3d 1217, 1221 (Fla. 2017), the Florida Supreme Court held that a Colorado grandparent visitation order was enforceable in² See Art. IV, § 1, U.S. Const. (“Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.”).³ The UCCJEA is also codified in Chapter 54, Pennsylvania Statutes, sections 5401 through 5412.

III.

Under the UCCJEA, a court’s domestication allows for enforcement of a foreign order, but it does not confer authority to alter its terms unless jurisdiction is later found in another state. Parents argue that the Florida court took jurisdiction over the parties and the subject matter with the consent of all parties when it domesticated the Pennsylvania Order and ordered that it “retains jurisdiction, and upon application for the enforcement or the modification of this judgment, a party so required shall be and appear before the Court at the time specified by Motion and Notice of Hearing or in an Order of the Court.” Yet when Parents sought to modify the Pennsylvania Order, the Florida court found it lacked subject matter jurisdiction under section 61.516, Florida Statutes (2024), entitled “Jurisdiction to modify a determination.” Section 61.516, though, does not apply here, because jurisdiction transferred to Florida under section 61.515, Florida Statutes (2024). Under section 61.515, entitled “Exclusive, continuing jurisdiction,” when Pennsylvania made its initial child custody determination it had exclusive, continuing jurisdiction over the determination until: (a) a court of this state determines that the child, the child’s parents, and any person acting as a parent do not have a significant connection with this state and that substantial evidence is no longer available in this state concerning the child’s care, protection, training, and personal relationships; or (b) A court of this state or a court of another state determines that the child, the child’s parent, and any person acting as a parent do not presently reside in this state.

IV.

Accordingly, we reverse the trial court’s order denying rehearing, and remand with instructions to the Florida court to vacate its decision to decline its transferred jurisdiction, and to then follow the Florida statutory procedures to address Parents’ Supplemental Petition for Modification of the Final Judgment. REVERSED and REMANDED with instructions.⁵ Even if, arguendo, jurisdiction were not transferred to Florida under section 61.515, if Grandmother is not a “person acting as a parent,” then whatever Pennsylvania’s authority, Florida would have jurisdiction to modify the Pennsylvania order under section 61.516 “Jurisdiction to modify a determination”— the section under which the Florida court determined it lacked jurisdiction.