International Child Custody Cases Create Difficult Decisions
The Washington Post recently reported that U.S officials have been concerned with issues of international child custody disputes. They say these issues affect up to 75 American couples.
U.S officials said that as parents of different nationalities divorce, issues arise when one parent decides to take their children out of their natural born country and back to the parent’s native country.
In September, 2009, U.S citizen Christopher Savoie was arrested in Japan when he attempted to take his children back to the United States without his ex-wife’s consent.
The Japanese government did not charge Savoie with child abduction. They let him return back his home town in Tennessee, but his children remained in Japan.
Prior to Savoie’s retrieval attempt, a court hearing in the U.S. determined that he would get full child custody of the couple’s children.
But after the decision was made, his ex-wife took their children back to her country of Japan. This was a violation of the U.S. court’s child custody decision.
In Japanese law, only one of the parents is allowed to have full child custody after a divorce. In most cases, it is the mother who receives custody.
The fathers then have little if any access to their children until they are adults.
Since the Savoie situation, the U.S. has been determined to work out an agreement on child custody with Japan.
They believe that if an agreement could be reached, then both parties would benefit and all the parents’ rights would be protected. It would also stop parents from taking action on their own to take their children back.
U.S. officials recently met with a Japanese Foreign Ministry team in attempts to resolve the issue. They requested that Japan sign a treaty from the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction.
The treaty states that child custody decisions made by the country where the children were born should remain intact. It also protects the rights of both parents in child custody issues.
Japan has not yet signed the treaty. They argued that the treaty does not protect the rights of Japanese mothers in cases where they might flee from an abusive relationship with their foreign ex–husbands.
At this point, it appears no agreements have been reached but U.S. officials hope to come to a positive conclusion.
