Returning Children to France

Further to my earlier post Hague Convention & Discretion is this recent Court of Session opinion on an international abduction case brought by a French mother for the return of the three younger out of four children.

During October 2003 the French Family Court affirmed the residence arrangements for the respective children with both parents being prohibited from removing the children from French territory without the consent of the other. On about 3 July 2005, the father removed all four from the jurisdiction of the French Courts and flew them to Switzerland and then on to Bangkok. They remained in South East Asia until December 2007 when they returned to Dundee.

Throughout that time the petitioner sought to establish their whereabouts and in France criminal charges were brought against the father, and his sister who had helped him. In light of the children's removal and in November 2006 he was found guilty, in his absence, and sentenced to a period of 30 months imprisonment. Subsequently the father was arrested and appeared at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on 22 November 2007 when he did not consent to his extradition and was released on bail.

It was submitted on behalf of the mother that it had not been demonstrated that the children were now settled in their new environment, in terms of article 12 of the Hague Child Abduction Convention and sought an order for the return of each child to France. The court considered (1) the meaning of the phrase "the child is now settled in its new environment" and (2) if it was proved that the children were so settled did the court nevertheless retain a residual discretion to order the child's return. The court here looked at the conduct of the father in determining if the children were settled in their new environment.

Lord Turnbull accounted for the policy of the Convention as one of a number of other factors and thought the facts of Re M were quite different from the facts of this case. As sought by their mother an order for the children's return to France was made.

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Would You Trust This Man?

A week or so ago someone posted an article on a divorce forum "Former lawyer launches nutjob website" along with this link. What Dr Ditch-Her has written on his home pages and blog makes the man appear bitter and twisted. He claims he was done over in his divorce, retired to Switzerland and has launched a consultancy to try to prevent other men from landing up in a similar position. Dr D claims he was a lawyer for over 25 years, working at a top 25 firm and offers his services to help men conceal how much money they have and stop women "going after your assets via your genitals".

Using my browser I traced the article to RollOnFriday, a UK website that provides news, views and gossip on the legal profession. However, the Dr D domain name is registered in Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, which is a well known tax haven and might explain why he wants to be paid in $. As one forum member pointed out Dr D doesn't identify himself or say where he qualified, which country's laws he is abiding by or advising on - and nobody knows how or where to sue him in the event that they got clobbered by the Court because he gave them bad advice, for which they had to pay.

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Poor Mental Health in Children

The anxiety epidemic: Why are children so unhappy? in the Independent is yet another article mentioning that family breakdown is damaging children's mental health. However, the figures in this Office of National Statistics 2005 news release reveal that children in different family types fare just as badly or even worse.

It is true that the prevalence of mental disorders was found greater among children in single parent families (16%) when compared to two-parent families (8%) but it was also high;-

• in families whose interviewed parent had no educational qualifications (17 per cent) compared with those who had a
degree level qualification (four per cent);

• in families with neither parent working (20 per cent) compared
with those in which both parents worked (eight per cent);

• in families with a gross weekly household income of less than
£100 (16 per cent) compared with those with an income of
£600 or more (five per cent).

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'Shirley Valentine'

BBC News reports a woman sentenced to a suspended 13 week jail term and unpaid work after going abroad with her boyfriend for 6 weeks whilst leaving her 14 year old daughter home alone. The daughter had also formed an underage sexual relationship condoned by the mother. The father, who was said to be unaware the girl had been left alone, now has residency.

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Income Changes After Divorce

John Bolch of Family Lore has drawn attention to a paper published by the Institute of Social and Economic Research into the longer term income changes after marital dissolution. Previous studies found that there are large falls in income in the year after a marital split for separating women and children, but not for separating men. The research concludes this trend has continued although the size of the decline has declined.

Further to this 5 years after the split incomes for separating wives do recover but not to their previous levels..... However women who do not have a job in any of the five years after a marital split, or who do not find a new partner, do much worse than this.

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