International child custody and the Hague Convention

When parents divorce or separate, things get extremely complicated when different countries are involved. Let’s say you’re from Las Vegas, Nevada, and your spouse is from Paris, France. Your spouse might want to go home to Paris with the kids, and you might want to keep them home in Las Vegas.

As unfortunate as it sounds, from time to time a foreign parent will go home for vacation, bring the children along, then stay there and never come back. In these circumstances, the law protects the rights of the parent in the original country. Parents who are left behind like this can often assert their legal rights under the Hague Convention, which has been adopted by many countries.

The United States adopted the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspect of International Child Abduction in order to prevent child abduction by parents of the children and others. The Hague Convention seeks to streamline the process of returning abducted children back to their place of origin, so that the child custody matter can be litigated in their local courts.

The Hague Convention governs a potential violation of a parent’s custody rights or if the wrongful removal of children from their home country has occurred, the petitioner will first submit a custody action in local court. In that action, the petitioner will request that the local court invokes Hague Convention protocol.

Las Vegas parents of children abducted by the other parent to another country will want to investigate whether their child is in a Hague Convention signatory nation. If so, the Kainen Law Group, PLLC can help parents assert their legal rights in family court to try and get their children safely and quickly returned. If the country is not a signatory nation, then other legal strategies will need to be employed.