Posts in the category ‘Family’
Russia joins The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction
On October 1st, the Hague Convention of 25 October 1980 on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction came into force in Russia, making it the 86th Contracting State to the Convention. The Hague Convention provides the procedural mechanisms for courts in Contracting States to return children to the state of their habitual residence when they have been unlawfully removed or retained by a parent or guardian. The purposes of the Hague Convention are to ensure both the prompt return of abducted children and to create a deterrent for individuals who may otherwise consider abducting their child.
In signing on to the Convention, Russia joins the likes of Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and most European states. There are still a large number of states which are not signatories to the Convention however, with notable examples including China, India, Japan, and South Korea. As the number of Contracting States to the Convention expands, the degree of legal certainty which it provides concurrently increases. The Hague Convention is an instrument of private international law which is designed to harmonize jurisdictional conflicts; the greater the number of Contracting States, the deeper legal harmonization becomes in this particular area of law.
Still, there is some scepticism as to whether Russian courts will comply with the spirit of the Convention.[1] The Convention requires the return of children who have been unlawfully removed…
BY Todd M. Heine
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Comparative Law
Family
Private International Law
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Spousal Abuse’s Grave Risk to Children Under the Hague Abduction Convention
My previous post discussed the potential impact on women of the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, with a focus on ne exeat orders as rights of custody. I briefly mentioned the problems surrounding women who flee from domestic violence, when their abuser uses the Convention to affect a child’s return to the previous habitual residence.
In short, the Convention requires a court to return a child to the child’s previous habitual residence when someone–almost always a parent–abducts the child across borders.
While the Hague Abduction Convention most often provides a valuable and useful remedy, spousal abuse victims face particular difficulties when they leave a country with their child to avoid further abuse.
The Convention provides an exception to return under Article 13(b) when returning the child to the previous habitual residence will cause a grave risk of harm or an otherwise intolerable situation for the child.
While at first glance this would appear to provide safety for mothers who cross borders with their children to flee spousal abuse, this has not proved true in international case law. Instead, courts have construed this exception so narrowly that in many cases courts have sent these children–and in effect their mothers as well– back to the previous habitual residence where the abuser lives to determine custody arrangements.
This practice can be observed in case law from…
Ne Exeat Provisions as Rights of Custody: A Burden on Single Mothers Under the Hague Abduction Convention?
As I have posted in a previous Legal Frontiers entry, many nations recognize ne exeat provisions as rights of custody under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. In last term’s Abbott v. Abbott case, the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted ne exeat provisions as “rights of custody” in international family law in the U.S. In doing so, the Court expressly rejected the opposite view that the Supreme Court of Canada twice embraced in dicta–a view that arguably provides more protection for single mothers.
Ne exeat provisions exist in statutes or court orders and forbid one parent from removing a child from a country without the other parent or a court’s consent. These provisions protect children and parents by ensuring the other parent will be able to exercise custody and access rights. These provisions also preserve a court’s jurisdiction to decide and modify legal issues like custody, child support, and protective orders.
If a parent violates a ne exeat provision and removes a child from one country without the other parent or a court’s consent, the courts in another country may immediately return the child to the previous country based on the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects on International Child Abduction. Many courts have interpreted ne exeat provisions as providing rights of custody–even when the ne exeat provision…
An early pitch for the Hague Maintenance Convention
In private international family law, a party (an obligee, that is) may face a legal maze when enforcing a foreign spousal support/maintenance order against a former spouse (an obligor). The U.S. state courts offer an illustrative example.
But before heading Stateside, I will mention some private international law instruments on this topic.
The Hague Conference on Private International Law has completed the Convention of 23 November 2007 on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Maintenance. However, with only two signatories (the U.S. and Burkina Faso) and no ratification, this convention has not entered into force.
Nor do previous instruments offer much help. The predecessor 1973 Hague Conventions on the topic garnered relatively meager support. Some reciprocal agreements exist between the U.S. or U.S. states and other countries, but careful analysis reveals little uniformity among these agreements.
Thus, private international law agreements do not—yet—provide much clear help on this subject.
So in the U.S., domestic courts play the leading role, and the first issue in the domestic courts will be recognition. For those readers yearning for the “good old” private international law days, we now turn to the familiar subjects of comity and jurisdiction-specific law.
Based on comity, U.S. courts may recognize foreign maintenance orders. Comity—very generally—is a largely judicial doctrine whereby foreign court orders were obtained through proceedings in a foreign state…
Habitual Residence in the EU?
Habitual residence faces considerable uncertainty in the EU. Regulation 2201/2003—also known as Brussels IIbis (“BIIbis”)—establishes jurisdiction in parental responsibility disputes among EU Member States. (Here is an overview of EC Regulation 2201/2003). Habitual residence is the key factor in determining jurisdiction. This post analyzes a recent ECJ case and then contrasts its holdings with two subsequent UK cases.
a. Habitual Residence in the ECJ
The ECJ has endorsed a fact-based habitual residence test for cases under BIIbis in one decision so far. The case, A (C-523/07), involved a parental responsibility dispute between a mother and a public child welfare agency. Three children who lived with their mother and stepfather in Sweden since 2001 traveled as a family to Finland in the summer of 2005 to spend their summer holiday. While still in Finland in October 2005, they applied for public housing.
In November, a local welfare agency removed the children to a childcare unit. The mother unsuccessfully challenged this action in a Finnish court. On appeal, a Finnish appellate court submitted four questions to the ECJ.
In the central question, the Finnish asked how to determine the children’s habitual residence, considering their peripatetic lifestyle in Finland. The Advocate General’s (“AG”) opinion framed the issue with the need for a precise definition of habitual residence in light of the spirit and…
Child abductions and treaty interpretation
Private international law is, of course, a huge topic. A leisurely flip through the 1390 pages of Cheshire and North’s comprehensive text reveals the subject’s breadth. As society becomes more mobile and borders more porous, e.g. the European Union, private international law will only likely continue to grow.
One of the most “private” areas of private international law is international family law (which is, oddly enough, my focus area—see, e.g., my blog). Just this month, the United States Supreme Court heard a case involving a major private international family law convention, the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.
The Convention’s name tends to confuse some lay readers—it only deals with jurisdiction in cross-border custody disputes, not the more sinister cases that the words “child abduction” connote. The Convention primarily preserves jurisdiction in child custody disputes by providing an immediate return if a parent wrongfully removes a child from its country of habitual residence.
The father in the case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Abbott v. Abbott, contended that the mother wrongfully removed their child from Chile. The cases focuses on the ne exeat issue under the Convention.
Courts use ne exeat orders to preserve jurisdiction in custody disputes by forbidding a custodial parent from taking a child outside of a court’s jurisdiction without…
