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A pending application confers no authority unless the state has issued a temporary permit. Practicing before licensure exposes the practitioner to disciplinary action in that state, to reciprocal action wherever else they are licensed, to a permanent report, and in several states to criminal liability. The employer faces its own exposure, and professional liability cover may not respond to services rendered without authority. Fees earned may be unrecoverable.
Under the federal rule and its state equivalents, a party intending to raise an issue about the law of another state must give notice, generally in a pleading or by separate written notice. The court then determines that law as a question of law rather than as a question of fact, and may consider any relevant material whether or not submitted by a party and whether or not admissible in evidence.
Real property passes on death under the law of the state where it is located, not under the law of the decedent's domicile. That governs who takes it on intestacy, what formalities a will must satisfy to devise it, what spousal protections apply, whether creditors can reach it and how title is cleared. The domiciliary state governs personal property wherever located, so a single estate can be divided under two schemes at once.
Reciprocal agreements are arrangements between neighboring states under which residents of one who work in the other are taxed on those wages only by their home state. The employee files a certificate with the employer, who then withholds for the home state, and no non-resident return is required. Reciprocity is limited to wage income: business income, rental income and gains are not covered, and neither is income from work performed by a non-resident who is not covered by an agreement.
A person harmed by an unauthorized preparer faces a federal problem and a state problem. The federal problem is whatever was filed: it may need to be corrected, withdrawn, supplemented or appealed, and every one of those routes runs on a short deadline. The state problem is the money and the conduct, pursued through the attorney general, the registration authority, the surety bond and in most states a private claim with statutory damages.
An existing custody determination can be registered in another state by filing a letter of request, two copies of the order including one certified, a sworn statement that it has not been modified, and the parties' addresses. The receiving court files it and serves notice on the other party, who has a short period to contest on narrow grounds. Registration confirms enforceability; it does not confer any power to modify the order.
A majority of states require a parent intending to relocate with a child to give the other parent written notice, typically sixty days in advance, stating the new address, the date of the intended move, the reasons, and a proposed revised schedule. The other parent then has a defined period to object, and an objection generally triggers a hearing at which the court applies the state's relocation standard.
Removal on diversity grounds is barred more than one year after commencement of the action, regardless of when the case first became removable. The limit exists to prevent disruption of proceedings that have advanced substantially in state court. Congress added an exception where the district court finds that the plaintiff has acted in bad faith to prevent removal, with a specific provision addressing deliberate failure to disclose the amount in controversy.
Practitioners who stop working in a state face a choice among active renewal, an inactive or retired status, or letting the license lapse. Inactive statuses generally preserve the license at a reduced fee with reduced or no continuing education, but prohibit practice; retired statuses are similar and sometimes permit limited volunteer work.
Renvoi is the question of whether a reference to another state's law includes that state's own choice-of-law rules. If it does, the second state might refer the question back to the first, or on to a third, and the analysis could circle. American courts almost uniformly reject renvoi in ordinary cases: a reference to another state's law means its internal or local law, and its conflicts rules are disregarded.
Residence describes physical presence in a place with some degree of permanence, and a person may have several at once. Domicile is the single state the law treats as a person's home, established by presence plus an intention to remain indefinitely, and retained until a new one is acquired. Diversity jurisdiction, taxation as a resident, probate of movable property, custody jurisdiction, tuition classification, voting and jury service each turn wholly or partly on domicile.
Gain on the sale of a business is generally taxed by the state where the seller is resident at the time of the sale, on the basis that intangible assets follow the owner. States where the business operated may also tax a portion, particularly where the sale is structured as an asset sale rather than a stock sale, since gain on assets used in a business is frequently apportionable to the states where that business was conducted. Real property gain is taxed where the property sits.
