Under Subsection (a)(1), before a tribunal in a new forum may modify the controlling order three specific criteria must be satisfied. First, the individual parties affected by the controlling order and the child must no longer reside in the issuing State. Second, the party seeking modification must register the order in a new forum, almost invariably the State of residence of the other party. A colloquial (but easily understood) description of this requirement is that the modification movant must "play an away game on the other party's home field." This rule applies to either obligor or obligee, depending on which of those parties seeks to modify. Proof of the fact that neither individual party nor the child continues to reside in the issuing State may be made directly in the registering State; no purpose would be served by requiring the petitioner to return to the original issuing State for a document to confirm the fact that none of the relevant persons still lives there. Third, the forum must have personal jurisdiction over the parties. This is supplied by the movant submitting to the personal jurisdiction of the forum by seeking affirmative relief, almost always coupled with the fact that the respondent resides in the forum. On rare occasion, the personal jurisdiction over the respondent may be supplied by other factors, see Section 201 and the comment thereto, supra.

The policies underlying the change affected by Subsection (a)(1) contemplate that the issuing State no longer has an interest in exercising its continuing, exclusive jurisdiction to modify its order. This restriction attempts to achieve a rough justice between the parties in the majority of cases by preventing a litigant from choosing to seek modification in a local tribunal to the marked disadvantage of the other party. For example, an obligor visiting the children at the residence of the obligee cannot be validly served with citation accompanied by a motion to modify the support order. Even though such personal service of the obligor in the obligee's home State is consistent with the jurisdictional requisites of Burnham v. Superior Court, 495 U.S. 604 (1990), the motion to modify does not fulfill the requirement of being brought by "a [petitioner] who is a nonresident of this State ." In short, the obligee is required to register the existing order and seek modification of that order in a State that has personal jurisdiction over the obligor other than the