Filing And Litigating A Hague Convention Child Abduction Civil Case In Federal Court

1. Background on Child Abduction Cases Under the Hague Convention

   The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction ("Hague Convention") is an international treaty in which the signatory countries agree to cooperate in returning children to their home country, after the children have been abducted by one parent and taken to a foreign country.1 The goals of the Hague Convention are as follows: (1) to secure the immediate return of a child wrongfully removed or wrongfully retained in any Contracting State; and (2) to ensure that rights of custody and access under the law of one Contracting State are effectively respected in other Contracting States. Hague Convention, Art. 12 The United States is a signatory to the Hague Convention3 along with eighty-seven other countries.4

   To begin the process of seeking return of a child pursuant to the Hague Convention, the left-behind parent must first contact the designated Central Authority within his or her home country. The Central Authority will work with the left-behind parent to complete an Application and other supporting materials. The Central Authority sends these documents to the U.S. State Department's Office of Children's Issues ("State Department"), which is the designated Central Authority in the United States. The State Department then initiates the process of locating the child in the United States. Once the State Department locates the child, and if the left-behind parent requests pro bono legal representation, the State Department will locate attorneys within its attorney referral program, who may be interested in representing the left-behind parent. Once an attorney expresses an interest in a particular case, the prospective client can choose to contact that attorney. The attorney then has the opportunity to evaluate the case and determine whether to take on the representation.

   An attorney who has agreed to represent a left-behind parent ("petitioner"), will file a petition for the child's return in either state or federal district court in the district in which the abducting parent ("respondent") resides.5 A petitioner establishes a prima facie case for the return of a child under the Hague Convention if he or she proves three elements: (1) prior to removal or wrongful retention, the child was habitually resident in a foreign country; (2) the removal or retention was in breach of custody rights under the foreign country's law; and (3) the petitioner actually was...