Unmarried British Mother and Spanish Father have Daughter together.
Daughter is born in UK.
The family lives in Tenerife Island, Spain for over a year.
Daughter has serious heart condition.
Mother and Daughter return to the UK.
According to Mother, Father encouraged them to return to the UK for family support.
Both Spain and the UK are parties to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. Further, Tenerife law, apparently requires formal government permission to remove a child who has lived there for more than a year and who is the biological child of a Spaniard.
Father concedes that he does not take advantage of easy opportunities to visit Daughter and, according to Mother, Father never calls to find out about Daughter.
Nonetheless, some eight months of silence after Mother’s and Daughter’s return to the UK, police appear at Mother’s home and seize her passport.
Mother learns that she is required to return with ill Daughter to Tenerife, to appear in court there for the purpose of determining custody of Daughter.
Father reportedly now wishes to seek custody of Daughter.
Father comments that he does not want to go to court in England … because “it’s not my country”.
So much better to drag his sick child back to court in Tenerife.
