Full Faith and Credit Mandate

Need for FF&C

Some of the most violent and coercive batterers and stalkers drive their victims away, often forcing them to seek safety in other states. Many other battered victims travel temporarily across state lines for work or health care or to see family, shop, or vacation. Since abusers generally escalate their violence when their victims leave them or show any independence, victims of domestic violence need immediate police protection in the new state if their abusers threaten them. Yet most cannot obtain new orders of protection in a new state unless there is abuse in that state, and even then there are often long delays and difficulties in serving the abusers with court papers, assuming the victim has access to the courts in the new state. Furthermore, states may not be able to order sufficient protection when the abuser does not reside in the new state. Some abusers keep forcing their victims to flee to ever new states. The clear solution for victims who already have an order of protection from one state is for other states to honor and enforce the previously enacted order, without requiring them to go to court to register the order.

History

Traditionally U.S. court decisions held that because judicial determinations (such as injunctions and child [Page 284]custody or support orders) were not final judgments and could be modified, they were not entitled to FF&C. Orders of protection and restraining orders to stop domestic violence and stalking are injunctions, which were seen to fall under this exception. Ex parte orders (those that courts give in an emergency before the respondent is given notice or a chance to contest the order) were particularly seen as not entitled to FF&C because they gave the respondent no due process.

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