People Ex Rel. Bukovich v. Bukovich

This is a direct appeal by the plaintiff, Joseph Bukovich, from a judgment of the circuit court of Cook County denying his petition for a writ of habeas corpus by which he sought to take custody of his 6-year-old son, Mark, from the boy's mother, Sally Bukovich. The judgment appealed from is contrary to the prior rulings of the circuit court of Porter County, Indiana, and the Supreme Court of Texas, both of which declared the right to custody of Mark to be vested in the plaintiff, and we must determine whether the Indiana and Texas judgments were denied full faith and credit in violation of the first section of article IV of the Federal constitution. The plaintiff and the defendant were married in 1958 in the State of Indiana and divorced there on June 15, 1962. Mark was born in January, 1960. The divorce decree awarded custody of the infant child to the mother while the father was ordered to pay for his support and given visitation rights. Between June, 1962, and December, 1963, there were several claims of denials of the father's visiting rights. Apparently in December the defendant asked the Porter County Circuit Court for permission to take Mark to California where she had been offered a job. On December 2, 1963, however, the Indiana court conducted a hearing pursuant to a petition of the plaintiff that charged the defendant with violating his rights of visitation. When the mother failed to personally appear in that proceeding the court found her to be in contempt of court, that she was not a fit person to have custody of the minor child and awarded custody of Mark to his father.