BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER

For the second time this year, the attorney for a Cuban man seeking custody of his 4-year-old daughter, who is living in the home of a Coral Gables foster family, is seeking to oust the Miami judge who is presiding over the dispute.

During a brief court hearing Wednesday, attorney Ira Kurzban told Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen he will argue that she does not have authority to hear the case because it involves parents and a sibling who are foreign nationals. As foreign citizens, he said, they should be allowed to resolve the dispute in Cuban courts.

''We believe this court no longer has jurisdiction,'' Kurzban said. "The child is a foreign national. Both parents are foreign nationals, and the parents wish to dispense of this matter in foreign courts.''

A few months ago, Kurzban asked Cohen to recuse herself from the case because he said she had held private conversations about the case with an attorney who represents the Cuban-American couple that is caring for the girl and wishes to adopt her. The couple already has adopted her 12-year-old half-brother.

Cohen denied the recusal request. Kurzban has yet to make his second request formally.

Leon Fresco, a Miami immigration attorney who is familiar with international family law, said Kurzban is unlikely to prevail because Florida, like every other state, allows juvenile judges to hear cases involving foreignnational children on an emergency basis.

The case began as an emergency when state child-welfare officials took custody of the girl and her half-brother when their mother was hospitalized.

The girl and her half-brother emigrated to the United States with their mother in March 2004. By the following December, the two children were under the care of the Department of Children & Families after their mother suffered a bout of mental illness and called 911 for help.

The Department of Children & Families is seeking to declare the girl's father, who lives in Cuba, unfit to raise her, and they are asking Cohen to grant the foster family permanent guardianship so they can raise her in Coral Gables. The birth father has denied the department's claims.