Marital (pre and post) agreements can help assure that each spouse’s legal obligations and expectations are met – even if the new couple remains together until one of them dies.

Many people sour on marital agreements don’t really grasp that – or the legal and emotional obligations that may have arisen out of a prior marriage and/or existing children.

When embarking on a second (or later) marriage, communication and analysis before the wedding about each party’s financial situation is even more important than in a first relationship.

These may spawn individual and/or joint action plans for couples to work on before the wedding.

Read more in this Portsmouth [NH] Herald article: ‘I do’ — again: Money does matter when remarrying.

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 modified 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.

Biological father pays woman to bear his child as surrogate mother.

Bio dad is reportedly sentenced to prison on unrelated criminal charges.

Bio mother informally “places” baby with a married couple for much of his two years of life.

Bio mom changes her mind and seeks return of child to her custody.

A Utah trial court ruled that the child’s ongoing caregivers could retain custody of the baby and deny visitation to his bio mom.

The Utah Supreme Court reversed, concluding that the biological parents had superior rights to permanent custody of the boy.

The state’s high court held that the couple who had actually been raising the boy were “legal strangers” to him.

The court also held that access by the bio parents could only be blocked based on a finding of harm to the boy.

The supreme court remanded for a full-blown, custody determination, as though the custody dispute was merely between two typical biological parents.

Interestingly, however, the court expressed the hope that the bio parents would reach an agreement with the couple who had been caring for the baby, in a caring, stable home.

In light of the contractual arrangement between the boy’s biological parents and the arrangement (not entirely clear) between the bio mom and the couple who had been raising the boy, other states may well have arrived at a different outcome on the above facts.

Read more in this [Central UT] Daily Herald article: Utah Supreme Court rules couple must give up boy.