General legal information furnished as a service of Fort Lauderdale / West Palm Beach family law attorney Janet Langjahr
A widowed Ireland woman remarried and moved to the US with her children.
Her aging parents visited them in the US and took her youngest boy out to lunch.
When she returned after lunch to pick her boy up, they were nowhere to be found.
In an unusual move, her elderly parents allegedly abducted her boy to Ireland. That was two years ago.
Now they are wanted in Illinois for aggravated kidnapping, a charge carrying a penalty of up to 30 years in prison.
The boy’s mother reportedly doesn’t want her parents extradited and jailed.
The grandparents, relying on an old Irish order awarding them custody, previously started an application in the US for return of the child to Ireland under the Hague Convention. But the application was denied.
Communications between the two branches of the boy’s family have resumed.
Nonetheless, extradition proceedings in Ireland are expected to continue in this puzzling case.
Read more in this Irish Examiner article: Grandparents face 30 years in US jail.
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