Kovacs v. Brewer

At stake in this case is the welfare of a child. More immediately the question before us is what restriction, if any, does the Constitution of the United States impose on a state court when it is determining the custody of a child before it. The contest here for the child’s custody is between her mother and her grandparents: a mother whom a New York court, in divorce proceedings while the child was present in New York, did not find to be a suitable custodian, and the grandparents, living in North Carolina, to whom the New York court decreed the custody of the child and with whom the child,…