In some good news, the US Supreme Court recently ruled against a woman who violated her parenting plan by removing her child from Chile and returning to the US despite signing an agreement with the child’s father stipulating that he would be involved in decisions as to where the child lived. The father is British and the mother American, but they divorced in Chile.
Interestingly, the man did not have custody of the child, but the parenting plan was given enough weight by the judges to overturn an appeals court ruling that excused her abduction of the child. The key factor in the ruling was the Hague Convention on child abduction, a treaty aimed at preventing parents – primarily mothers – from crossing borders with children to sever their connections with the other parent.
According to Justice Kennedy:
To interpret the Convention to permit an abducting parent to avoid a return remedy, even when the other parent holds a ne exeat right, would run counter to the Convention’s purpose of deterring child abductions by parents who attempt to find a friendlier forum for deciding custodial disputes…
Dissenters included Justices John Paul Stevens, Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer.
