822.01.Short title; purposes; construction of provisions.

Section 822.01 opens chapter 822 by giving it a name, the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act, and by stating why the chapter exists. Before rules like this existed, courts in different states sometimes competed for authority over the same child’s custody, and children were shifted from state to state as a result, with harmful effects on their well-being. Chapter 822 is built to prevent that.

Subsection (2) lists six purposes. The chapter aims to avoid jurisdictional competition and conflict between states, to promote cooperation so that the custody decree comes from the state best positioned to decide the case in the child’s interest, to discourage using the interstate system to keep custody fights going, to deter abductions of children, to avoid relitigating another state’s custody decisions in Wisconsin, and to make it easier to enforce another state’s custody decrees.

These purposes are not stand-alone rules a party can sue under. They function as an interpretive anchor for everything that follows. The jurisdiction provisions in subchapter II are built around identifying a single state, usually the child’s home state, with authority to decide custody, which serves the goal of avoiding competition. The enforcement provisions in subchapter III implement the purposes of avoiding relitigation and easing enforcement of other states’ decrees.

Read together with section 822.02’s definitions and section 822.03’s boundary on the chapter’s reach, section 822.01 sets the frame for the rest of chapter 822: a single, well-defined jurisdictional home for a custody case, with cooperation and enforcement tools built to keep it there.