help with rights to leave country with children if seperated?

[Huffpot]

Hi all. This is purely hypothetical at the moment as I'm happy with my partner but saying that his mother is exceptionally difficult and lives with us hence the query.

Basically I'm originally from Australia and moved to the UK 4 years ago and have stayed.
I have an Irish father so also hold an Irish passport and have dual citizenship.

My partner who is english and I have two beautiful little boys together. I've always told him if we seperated I would return to Oz(not out of spite towards him) as I have my familt there to support me with the babies.

I was wondering if anyone knows where I would stand legally with taking the boys back to Oz with me if it came to the crunch
Both boys have English passports

Thanks :-)

I suspect your partner could get a court order preventing you from taking the children to Oz to live if you were separated on grounds that he would not have reasonable access to the children

I think you'd have troubles. Possibly not as much as if the situation were reversed, as it is in my case (I'm English, married to an Australian living in Australia) where I know that if we were to split I wouldn't be able to remove DS back to the UK until he was 18 without DH's consent because the divorce courts here are apparently very strong on this situation.

Before I knew about this, I also told DH that if anything were to happen I'd be back to the UK with DS - but I now know this would be next to impossible as DH is unlikely to consent to it happening.

FX for both of us that the need never arises.

If P agrees, no problem. If he resists, the Hague Convention would apply - in most cases, it would be expected that after a split, one parent does not move the dcs out of the country of their habitual residence without the consent of the other parent.

I have read of cases going to court, main carer argues that returning to their home country is best interests for bringing up children.
Don't quote me on it but I have googled this in the past.

Would it really be in the best interests of your DC to effectively remove their father from their lives? why would you want to do that?

But living a life of unhappiness of one parent to avoid separation/unhappiness of the other?
I wonder if anyone has successfully had joint custody across the two countries?

Imagine being told, if we split up I'm tak

Imagine being told:

'If we split up I'm taking the children 9000 miles away to be nearer my family'

I think that's not very nice. It's like saying me and my family are more important than you and yours.

If he didn't consent, which I imagine he wouldn't, then you would need to seek leave of the Court to remove the children from the jurisdication. Whether any such application would succeed would depend on a number of factors.