General legal information furnished as a service of Fort Lauderdale / West Palm Beach family law attorney Janet Langjahr
According to a study reported on in the Sydney [Australia] Morning Herald, in 1970, thirty percent of abductions of children to other countries were perpetrated by fathers.
Fast forward to today, and seventy percent of abductions of children to other countries are perpetrated by mothers - who are typically victims of abuse, trying to escape from it.
The study, Learning From The Links Between Domestic Violence And International Parental Child Abduction, was published by the International Social Service Australia.
This shift probably reflects two trends, one good, one bad. The good: fathers having greater rights and access under modern law and cases may feel less need to resort to international abduction. The bad: more domestic abuse is driving mothers to resort to international abduction in growing numbers.
Read more in this Sydney Morning Herald article: 70% of abductions are by mothers.
An Australia man will be coming to Alabama in an effort to have his baby boy returned to Australia for a custody decision under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.
The baby’s mother is from Alabama, but met the man in Australia and joined him there to live for a year after their baby was born.
The mother alleges that the man is abusive and that she and the baby were in danger of physical harm from him. An Alabama judge agreed and granted her an order of protection from him.
Under the Hague Convention, custody decisions are generally made in the country of the child’s habitual residence.
But there is a well-established exception where the child would be in a dangerous situation in the place of habitual residence.
Read more in this Mobile Register article: Judge to hear international custody case - Case deals with child taken from Australia.
Father lives in Canada. Mother now lives in Nebraska with daughter.
Canada still has jurisdiction over the child.
Mother alleges that Father has sexually and physically abused daughter, and seeks to block visitation ordered by Canadian courts. No criminal charges have been filed anywhere.
Nebraska courts agree with Mother and, exercising emergency jurisdiction, enter order to protect daughter.
The exercise of emergency jurisdiction under emergency conditions is not extraordinary. Typically, the court does what it must on a temporary basis to protect a child until the proper jurisdiction can proceed.
But Nebraska appears to have undertaken an extraordinary measure in this case.
According to reports, it seems that the legislature rushed through a special statute authorizing the Nebraska courts to seize continuing jurisdiction over the child.
If true, this would appear to violate both US child custody jurisdiction laws (UCCJEA and UCCJA Acts) and the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.
Read more in this Omaha World-Herald article: Foreign custody bill zips through to signature.
Twelve years ago, a Washington state family court awarded custody of a child to her mother in her parents’ divorce. Shortly thereafter, the father failed to return the girl from a holiday visit to Mexico.
Since then, the mother has given up everything to seek court orders in Washington and Mexico which would pave the way for her daughter’s return home. She got most of the court orders.
But her daughter remains in Mexico anyway.
Mexico is a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.
But despite that, it reportedly has a poor track record of honoring the Convention and enforcing decisions made under it. The US government and its agencies have provided little, if any, help.
The warrant for the father’s arrest for custodial interference is, essentially, worthless.
Twelve years.
In three years, the child will be a legal adult. Maybe then her mother will be able to see her.
Read more in this YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC article: Custody battle exposes difficulties with international law.
Parental kidnapping cases just may involve the department of homeland security soon.
New, stricter laws were recently enacted which require Americans traveling anywhere outside the US to have passports.
These regulations have been attributed by the media solely to concerns about homeland security.
But there’s another reason for them too.
Increasingly common parental abductions of minor children across national borders.
The new measures will make it tougher for an abducting parent to “slip under the radar” by means of routing travel plans through places such as Mexico, Canada and the Carribean, which have not previously required passports of US tourists.
Read more in this New Jersey Observer-Tribune article: Abductions are focus of new federal laws.
A former winner of Gold medals for Canada at the Olympics is in hot water.
She stands accused of abducting her daughter to the US in alleged violation of a custody agreement with the girl’s father. The child’s father reportedly feared that this was just the first step toward removing the girl to Iran, the athlete’s current husband’s homeland.
The mother denies any wrongdoing and insists that she is being politically persecuted. She is requesting to be released from her incarceration in Maryland so that she can return to Canada on her own.
Their daughter has already gone back to Canada with her father, who hadn’t seen her in a couple of months.
The Canadian government hasn’t yet officially requested extradition. It is allowed 60 days to do so …
The athlete’s Iranian husband allegedly also faces unrelated criminal charges in Canada. The athlete contends that those charges are also politically motivated.
Read more in this CanadaEast Interactive article: Bedard’s lawyer says she’s lucid amid bizarre trip and custody battle and this CTV.ca article: Myriam Bedard’s lawyers try to reach deal with Quebec in abduction case.
According to news reports, American fathers essentially lose their kids when their Japanese wives steal away with them to Japan. And it’s not a rare occurrence.
Japanese courts reportedly almost always disregard prior US custody decisions and award custody to the Japanese parent every time, favor children being raised in Japan in every case and typically deny American fathers any visitation rights at all.
Japan apparently does not treat parental abductions as criminal, no matter the circumstances.
Surprisingly, Japan is not a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. And so the US government and the American fathers left behind are helpless.
Ironically, the Japanese have chronicled, in a cinematic appeal for a US show of support, parental abductions of half-Japanese children by North Koreans - in which Japanese fathers suffered similar fates to the American fathers described above - to the outrage of the Japanese people.
Read more in this Axcess News article: Frustrated Fathers of Abducted Children Turn to Public for Support.
A Texas judge presiding over the divorce of a Canadian citizen ordered her not to remove the couple’s children from the area.
Despite that order, the woman was allegedly caught on a northbound bus in Kansas with the children - and arrested for interference with a custodial order. She was believed to be headed out of the country, to her native Canada.
As result of the woman’s disobedience of the court’s order, the court reportedly awarded temporary custody of the couple’s children to the children’s uncle.
Read more in this Star-Telegram article on the Bradenton Herald website: Azle woman held in child-custody.
Why would a mother plead for leniency for her child’s alleged kidnapper - especially when the mother has been deprived of any contact with her child whatsoever since 1996?
That’s exactly what happened in this unusual case.
The man was convicted and imprisoned on charges of custodial interference, for aiding his friend in kidnapping the friend’s daughter with the man’s niece - from a supervised visit. The friend then absconded with the child to Iran.
The child’s mother has not been able to have any contact with her since.
Nonetheless, the mother has sought leniency for her uncle, whose wife now requires expensive medical treatments for cancer. The man reportedly wants his freedom so he can return to a six-figure job to pay for her treatments.
And that is what has tipped the scales of - mercy - in favor of the convicted kidnapper’s early release, just halfway through his 16 month sentence.
This case inspired an important change in Connecticut’s child custody laws in 1999.
In Connecticut, it is now illegal for a parent with joint custody to take the child away from the other parent either “permanently or for a protracted period of time”.
Read more in this Stamford Advocate article: Man serving time for kidnapping is out early.
Imagine living in a country where parents with children are absolutely barred from leaving the country - even for a short vacation to visit relatives abroad.
Every reader surely cringes at the prospect of such a prohibition on two parents of an intact family traveling together with their common children.
So, are we imagining a third world country? An extremist regime?
Try democratic Israel.
And maybe, just maybe, where US policy may be heading regarding relocation (or routine travel) with children born of now-broken relationships - even to another state in this country.
Read this chilling article on Israel’s Haaretz.com: When your new homeland becomes your prison.
In many states across the US, custodial parents today are finding it increasingly difficult to escape (either temporarily or permanently) the particular state where their divorce happened to have been entered, let alone the country.
Often, in practice, without any real regard to the circumstances imposed on the family in that particular state, the likely degree of risk of abduction or denial of access to children, or competing risks to the children and/or custodial parent. Certainly not without great expenditure of time and resources in the courts.
Does this policy serve the best interests of children?
The Hatikvah Foundation is fighting the prohibition in Israel. They are assembling an international panel of social workers and advocates of children’s and women’s rights to review and tackle the problem.
But what about here in the US?
Internationally, the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction already provides legal recourse in case of child abductions. Domestically in the US, there is legal recourse in the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act and a host of federal and state kidnapping and custodial interference statutes.
Is the “cure” growing worse than the disease?
A Canadian woman awaits news of her two daughters, of whom she has sole custody.
Back in July, their father took them on vacation to visit his relatives in Australia - but they reportedly didn’t return on schedule.
Instead, their father, who has dual Lebanese-Australian citizenship, allegedly took them to Lebanon, in the midst of the war between Hezbollah and Israel.
Their mother is waiting for a hearing in Australia, to question the father’s relatives about their whereabouts.
The father reportedly wants sole custody of the girls and for them to live with him permanently in Australia.
Canada has issued international warrants and an extradition order.
But neither Australia or Lebanon will honor the extradition order. Under Lebanese law, there can be no such thing as parental kidnapping.
Although Australia is a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, Lebanon is not.
Read more in this Calgary Herald article: Mother fights to get abducted girls back and this Star Phoenix article: Children taken away to Lebanon by father.
Couple lived in the Netherlands. Daughter born and raised there.
Father sometimes allegedly violent and Mother unhappy.
Mother’s mother becomes terminally ill.
Mother and daughter return to New Zealand, reportedly with Father’s permission.
Father maintains that it was agreed that Mother and Daughter were to remain in New Zealand only until Mother’s mother passed.
Mother maintains Father knew that the move was permanent.
After a few months, Father followed Mother and Daughter to New Zealand - but reportedly lived separately from them.
After about 6 months, Father was ordered to leave New Zealand as a result of a new domestic violence allegation (eventually dropped).
A trial court in New Zealand found that the Netherlands was Daughter’s habitual residence, and that she must be returned there for a custody determination.
On appeal, the decision was reversed under an exception, under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, where the other parent and child left the former habitual residence to escape domestic violence.
Although the Court did not make such a ruling, arguably the child’s place of habitual residence changed after 6 months anyway.
Read more in this New Zealand Herald article: Court revokes order to send girl back to Netherlands.
An American woman lived in France with her husband and son for an extended period of time.
When the woman divorced her husband in France, she was awarded custody of their son, but she was enjoined from taking him out of France for an extended period of time such as would interfere with his father’s visitation.
Later, the mother moved with the boy to California.
The father brought suit to enforce the French order in a California court.
At trial, the court held that, if the mother did not timely return the boy to France, custody of the boy would be transferred to the father.
The mother appealed, arguing that the trial court’s order, which conditionally modifyied custody, violated the original custody order of the French court. Since the French court had continuing exclusive jurisdiction under the UCCJEA, the California court did not have jurisdiction or authority to modify the French custody order by ordering that the boy be returned to his father’s custody in France.
On appeal, the court reversed, agreeing with the mother. The court then ordered that the boy be returned back to his mother’s custody in California.
There was no report as to whether the father had taken any enforcement action in France, which retained jurisdiction over the boy.
Read more in this Metropolitan-News Enterprise article: C.A.: Courts May Not Modify Foreign Child Custody Order.
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.
A twelve year old girl has left her mother’s home in Scotland and is now living in her father’s home in Pakistan, in violation of a previous UK court order awarding custody of the child to her mother.
Simultaneously, the name that the child goes by has changed from Molly Campbell to Misbah Iram Ahmed Rana.
A couple of weeks ago, the media reported that the girl had been abducted by her father, possibly to be forced into an arranged marriage with an adult stranger.
But now, a Pakistani court has ignored the UK custody order and awarded the father temporary custody of the girl at a hearing in Pakistan that the girl’s mother did not attend.
Now the official word is that “[s]he said her mother’s home had become a ‘living hell’ and her father’s Islamic culture in Pakistan suited her more.”
The girl is reportedly under 24 hour surveillance to protect her from being snatched back to the UK.
Pakistan is not a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, but there reportedly is a similar pact between Pakistan and the UK.
The child’s Pakistani attorney reported that his strategy will be to ” challenge the judicial protocol because it allows British wives of Pakistani men to keep children after dissolution of a marriage”.
Six of the attorney’s previous cases honoring the pact between Pakistan and the UK reportedly resulted in children being returned to the UK for custody decisions to be entered there. Prompting the change in strategy.
Read more in the articles below:
A Malta Court has rejected a Hague Convention application by an English resident for return of a 12 year old boy to the mother who had been awarded custody of him by an English court several years earlier.
The Court ruled that the boy would be placed at grave risk of physical and psychological harm if he returned, because his older brother had been in some scrapes with the law while living with his mother in England. The boy also reported that he had observed drug use in his mother’s home.
The boy’s father had reportedly suffered a nervous breakdown when he lived in the UK, and afterward abandoned his family to return to Malta.
Nonetheless, the two older children allegedly moved back with their father in Malta when they turned 15, under circumstances which were not reported.
The boy allegedly decided to stay in Malta while on vacation with his father and siblings, because “it’s not safe … I don’t want to end up in crime like my brother”. It was not reported whether the Malta Court considered whether the boy had been manipulated or coached.
This case demonstrates how differently the Hague Convention is interpreted and applied by different countries. Many countries would have returned the boy to the custody review and supervision of the country whose courts had already validly exercised jurisdiction over him.
Read more in this Times of Malta article: Boy, 12, finds Gozo a refuge from crime.
A court gave her father sole custody of her. Her mother then allegedly abducted her to Canada.
The now 7 year old girl is back in Pennsylvania - in foster care.
It seems that when her mother lost custody, she accused the girl’s father of sexually abusing her. Authorities here determined that the allegations were unfounded.
But when the mother was arrested, the child was placed in foster care in Canada. And once she was in foster care, the Canadian child protective services required assurances to release the child.
So the girl’s father consented to her going into foster care in Pennsylvania, so that she could be returned to the US.
The father awaits a hearing to obtain an order that will send his daughter home to him.
Read more in this Philadelphia Inquirer article: 7-year-old back in Montco.
Back in May, I posted regarding a Pregnant Woman Jailed for Abducting Children Abroad.
The children have now been returned to their father in Canada, in accordance with the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.
The father has reportedly maintained all along that the mother has turned the case into a media circus, exploiting their children and religious bias to try their case in the court of public opinion.
The mother, who remains in prison in Canada, is allegedly running for the Presidency in France.
Her current, common law husband is reportedly running for the office of Minister of Justice there.
“Together, [they] are writing a book critical of Gettliffe’s treatment in Canada, which they have tentatively titled In The Hell of the Canadian Prisons.”
There is no indication whether the criminal charges pending against them may impede their chances of winning at the polls.
Certainly, this is not the typical child custody case. Not even the typical international child kidnapping case.
Read more in this in-depth Vancouver Sun article: Father reconnecting with his children.
Some of the most challenging cases for parents and their attorneys are international kidnapping cases.
Unfortunately, it can take months and years to guide these cases through the court system. And ultimate success - getting your child back - is not guaranteed, even if you win a court order.
Some people give up on the legal system before they get that far. Some never bother trying it.
The Akron (OH) Beacon Journal publishes a chilling yet compelling series of articles about the “child recovery industry”, snatchback-ers.
This is not an endorsement of extra-legal methods of child retrieval. But the article is thought-provoking and eye-opening for parents who may someday face such a nightmarish situation.
Read the first article in the series: Seeking a lost daughter, one woman is introduced to the world of snatchbacks.
A Scottish court has upheld a Dutch court’s ruling, under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, that a Scottish resident must return her two children to Holland, where their father lives.
The Inverness (Scotland) Courier article: Tug-of-love mother in battle with Dutch courts doesn’t specify how long the children have been living in Scotland (although the reader may infer approximately one year).
According to the article, the parents are in dispute over whether the mother ever told the father that she was permanently removing the children from Holland.
The article does report, however, that the mother moved to Holland a year or two before either child was born, and remained in Holland so that the couple’s two year old and four year old were both born in Holland - and lived only in Holland until their mother removed them.
The article doesn’t furnish any reason as to why the mother left Holland, having lived there on the apparent order of six years.
The mother plans to return to Holland with the children and pursue any legal challenges available there.
Custody of the children has not yet been determined, ony jurisdiction to decide custody.
After four months in Cairo, a six year old boy’s mother reportedly returned with the boy to the US, upon discovering that a federal warrant had been issued for her arrest. The mother allegedly moved to take up with a man she had met over the internet.
Since their departure from the US, the father filed for divorce and custody. The father wants his son “to grow up in America”.
The boy is now in his father’s care, while the mother is released to her parents’ custody.
Read more in this Columbus Dispatch article: Father reunited with son after wife ends Cairo tryst.
Following a custody jurisdiction battle waged by the child’s father, the Pretoria High Court in South Africa has reportedly ordered the return of a three year old boy to the US.
The boy was born in the US and lived in California until he was a year old, when his mother allegedly removed him under the pretext of a vacation with her family - and then repeatedly stalled bringing the boy home, before finally refusing.
The boy’s father said he had to sell his home and give up his job to pursue his legal case for his son.
Fortunately for the father, South Africa is a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. Otherwise, the case might have turned out very differently.
It is unclear whether the mother plans to return to the US and pursue custody here.
Read more in this IOL article: ‘My little boy is going back home’.
Sometimes, complex cases have to be oversimplified, to put the focus on the core that is of legal significance.
Other times, simple cases have to get made complicated, by a party looking to obscure and hide that core, behind a lot of irrelevant “stuff”. Unfortunately, sometimes that works.
Such a case was recently reported in the New Jersey Lawyer.
The parents were divorced in the Dominican Republic, where they had lived for several years. Both were represented by counsel there.
The mother and children remained in the Dominican Republic after the divorce, but the father returned to New Jersey.
When the children were with the father for summer visitation, the father filed for a modification of custody, seeking sole custody of the children.
Generally speaking, under the law of most (if not all) of the states in the US, once a state (or country) has exercised valid jurisdiction over a child, that state keeps jurisdiction. Period.
Of course, there can be changes of circumstances that will justify a change of jurisdiction. But none was alleged or applied in this particular case.
So the father reportedly made unsupported allegations of abuse and neglect by the mother, in an apparent attempt at obfuscation.
In response, the mother introduced a good deal of evidence to contradict those allegations. Further, a court appointed psychologist reportedly could not find any support for the allegations.
Good try, but case closed? Well, no.
The father also alleged that the mother was going to move the children to another country, Norway.
And, if and when that happened, then there would be no place that would have jurisdiction. So, his argument went, New Jersey should exercise jurisdiction based on those speculations.
But where things get really interesting is here. The New Jersey court ruled - quite correctly - that New Jersey did not have jurisdiction.
Yet, having so ruled, the NJ court, in effect, inexplicably proceeded to exercise jurisdiction, enjoin the removal of the children from New Jersey and order that the children’s passports be held by the father.
If you’re confused, you’re not alone. This case illustrates yet again that obfuscation really does work sometimes.
Fortunately, it was all straightened out on appeal, with the father’s case in New Jersey being dismissed.
If you’re up for some obfuscation, read more in this New Jersey Lawyer article: Custody plans issued abroad.
Ten weeks. That’s how long it’s been since an Irish woman has seen or spoken to her seven year old daughter.
The daughter is reported to be with her father in Algeria, his homeland.
The father allegedly decided to remain in Algeria after taking his daughter for what was supposed to be a visit with extended family members.
Algeria is not a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.
The missing child has since been made a ward of the courts in Ireland, the child’ s home or habitual residence - but the mother fears she may nonetheless have to litigate custody in Algeria, where mothers reportedly don’t have many custodial rights.
Read more in this BBC news article.
Over 200,000 children in the US alone are abducted by a parent or other relative every year, according to Melissa Hart, herself a former child kidnapping victim.
Thirty years after the fact, she still struggles with self-identity issues as a result of being compelled to assume various personas - after discarding her true identity. Because, in Ms. Hart’s opinion, her mother couldn’t come up with a better solution to the situation with her difficult father.
Once grown, Ms. Hart could find no assistance to help her deal with the aftermath of her ordeal. Ironically, all the assistance available was directed to the parents who had created the situation - not the kids twisted in the middle.
That’s why she and others who were abducted as children banded together and founded, Take Root, a non-profit association that helps abducted children heal.
Read more of Ms. Hart’s affecting story in the Oregonian’s article: Abducted by parents, children become the forgotten victims .
It has been ordered that a five-year old boy leave his mother and sister behind in Sweden to return to New Zealand, in accordance with the terms of the Hague Convention, pending a custody determination there.
The boy’s father is reportedly subject to an order of protection, however, so the boy likely will not be able to live with his father if it is determined that he must remain in New Zealand permanently.
A Swedish newspaper reported that the boy may end up growing up in a New Zealand orphanage, but the boy’s father insists the boy could live with other relatives in New Zealand.
This case arose because the boy’s mother fled New Zealand, without the father’s permission, after securing the order of protection for herself, the boy and his sister.
The boy’s older sister was deemed mature enough to decide for herself where and with whom she wants to live. Therefore, she was permitted to remain with her mother in Sweden.
No such luck for the little boy, whose fate is now in the hands of the New Zealand courts.
The boy’s father is a political activist in New Zealand.
Read more in this New Zealand Herald article.
A pregnant woman is allegedly being held in a Canadian jail on charges of abducting her children to France, in direct violation of a Canadian court order prohibiting taking the children to visit maternal relatives in France.
The woman was apparently arrested when she returned to Canada to complete her academic doctoral program requirements, leaving the children behind in France with her mother.
The father has reportedly exhaustively litigated his application for return of the children to Canada under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, and the French courts have reportedly consistently ruled that the children must be returned to Canada as requested by the father.
The father contends that the mother has agitated in France to stir up popular sentiment against him on religious grounds.
Read more in this article.
An Illinois court ordered that two children born in the US be returned to their father in Poland, where the girls had reportedly been living before their mother allegedly abducted them to the US, after filing for divorce in Poland.
The mother reportedly absconded with the children to the US because “[i]n Poland there is no future for the kids.”
But it is reported also that neither the mother nor the children want to live in Poland again.
It was not reported whether the mother will pursue custody of the girls in the Polish courts, which have been held to have child custody jurisdiction over the children.
Read more in articles from the Chicago Sun Times and the Chicago Tribune.
A local Boca Raton woman is on trial for abducting her son from his father’s lawful custody and removing the boy to Costa Rica for nine months four years ago. She has not seen her son since she was arrested upon her return to this country.
The mother reportedly contends that she was protecting her son from alleged molestation by her ex-husband’s boyfriend. She refused any plea bargains and looks forward to vindicating herself at trial.
Read more in this Miami Herald article.
A child custody jurisdiction case on appeal to Maryland’s highest court reads like a law school final exam.
According to this Baltimore Daily Record article, the mother, father and child all lived in India from 1999 until 2002. Then the mother took the child away from India to the Baltimore metro area.
The father reportedly brought a child custody proceeding first, in India, within 6 months of the child’s removal from India. The mother later brought a child custody proceeding in Maryland, after living in Maryland with her son for six months.
India is not a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, and no other treaty applies.
When the mother filed for custody there, the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act was the applicable law of Maryland. Maryland has since adopted the newer Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act.
The Maryland trial court reportedly held that India had already validly exercised jurisdiction over the child by the time the mother filed suit in Maryland and, therefore, dismissed the mother’s suit there.
But an intermediate level appeals court overturned the dismissal of the mother’s Maryland case.
The key issue pressed on appeal is reported to be:
whether Maryland’s child custody jurisdiction statute requires Maryland to defer to India’s previous, presumably valid, exercise of jurisdiction in accordance with Indian law, if the mother was afforded due process of law, at least assuming that the child’s fundamental human rights would not be violated in India.
As the issue has apparently been framed narrowly on appeal (barring some unusual deviation from the uniform act in the version passed in Maryland), the answer likely should be yes.
Having said that, that still doesn’t necessarily mean that Maryland may not or should not exercise jurisdiction and proceed with the mother’s case. It just depends on all of the underlying facts of the case - and, arguably, on the status and posture of the case still pending in India, as well as the position of the judge presiding over the case in India.
It is unclear from the article whether the Maryland trial court delved that deep.
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