4 sisters returned to Italian father after their Australian Mum took them to Australia.....dragged kicking and screaming onto the plane.

[AmberLeaf]

Apparently the girls aged between 9-15 are dual citizens.

Link sorry its the DM.

Do they not take the childs view into account in Australia?

No, not necessarily.

The court can make the decision that it is in the best interests of the children to go with the mother to Australia. Especially if the children are older and their wishes are taken into consideration.

Or of course the court can decide that the best interests of the children mean them staying where they are.

What is the alternative to Hague? For any parent to be allowed to take any child with them to any country at any time without the agreement of the other parent?

I genuinely would like to see what alternative could work.

x-posted Bonsoir. The whole point of Hague is that he couldn't move country with his daughters

That is most unlikely in France, MaryZed, where the letter of the law is followed in cases of divorce and a formula applied unless the parents agree their own à la carte divorce (and lawyers are all dead against this so you are on your own).

Personally, I think children's welfare is best taken care of when their country of closest cultural identification takes such decisions. Not some third country which they are passing through.

When the mother has been removed from the picture (in a third country, father has custody), fathers can do whatever they like!

If we talk about France, at the moment the basis of divorce is that parents will have a 50/50 custody.

Unless you have 2 willing parents that are happy to compromise, the answer will be 'Children and both parents stay in France'.
Regardless on whether the dcs actually have any link with France (Because let's be honest, after 2 years in that country they won't be feeling french and France will not be their country).
And because France is very beaurocratic, this will be applied to the letter

The alternative isn't no regulation and whatever parent deciding whatever they like to do.
It's about realizing that even though they might not have lived in the mum country they might still have very strong link with that country (eg a friend of mine is going back to her home country for the whole summer hols every year plus for other hols too. the children prob spent 3~4 months there a year. they have family and friends there. Even though they have never 'lived' there on paper).
It's about realizing that forcing one parent to stay in a country can cause even bigger problems than saying they can leave with the dcs. Let's be honest, is it really more difficult now to handle shared parenting when you are in England and the other parent is in France compared to one parent living in the South of England and the other in the North east? The latter is OK and acceptable but the first would be considered kidnapping???
And it is about realizing that each case is unique and that a one fits all approach isn't going to work.

I think you do have a point when neither parent is from the country in question. However that would make no difference in this case, where the father and all the children are Italian. As in they were all born there and spent their whole lives there.

xpost.

I agree one size doesn't fit all, btw. I just think that Hague is the least worst solution in the majority of cases.

I do think there is a difference when two different countries are concerned although I would certainly support a law that if parents live in one town and are bringing up their children there then on divorce if mother wants to move 300 miles to be with her parents thens he leaves chidlren with their father and vice versa, that the default position is children stay where the parents had agreed they would be.

I know plenty of children who have lived in France all their lives with a French father and an English mother and are not particularly French at all. The assumption that children take on the culture of the country they reside in is far too simplistic.

Safest thing is marry someone who is from your area, religion and class, we all know that and then you have cultural similarities and are less likely to divorce too. Shared values etc etc. If you marry a foreigner you can lose your children.

As for the question of moving countries for work that's up to the couple and they both take risks with that and plenty of people refuse to mvoe countries because children usually don't benefit from being moved around and want stability. If that means daddy and mummy stay in duller jobs in London so be it.

As someone said above move parents agree contact, thankfully and there are no fights. The Hague Conventino is a very important protection and I wish more countries adopted it.

Mary, the mother and all the children are also australian though. Aren't they?

Being born in a country doesn't make you a citizen of that country as such.
And as I highlighted in my post before, it's not because they have lived all their life in Italy that Australia is a foreign country to them, as it would be to you.

I am sure that Bonsoir hopes that her dd is feeling in some ways english, just as I hope that my own dcs feel french, despite being born in the UK and 'having lived there all their life'. This is achieved just by the fact that I am still thinking in a french way and have passed that down to my dcs. They are not 'completely english' and never will be.
Is that acceptable to forget that part of their heritage, to say that 'it doesn't matter'? Surely this is much more complicated than that.

xpost again...

Xenia
I didn't think that you were so close minded. No mix between different religion, culture etc... should be allowed then? And you are you should be happy to forgo seeing your dcs or accept to live in less than suitable conditions for your sins perhaps?

Indeed, my DD is very English in many ways and identifies very strongly with England - and she has lots of friends here in Paris who identify very strongly with a culture other than French culture, be that German, Afghan, Polish, Italian, American.

And my nieces and nephew live in the Netherlands, and before that in Spain, and they don't have any cultural identification with either country.

They have never lived there though Lady. At least not before their mother took them there illegally.

The original aim of Hague was actually to stop fathers stealing their children and taking them back to the home country of the father - that's why it started, with a lot of mothers losing their children and never seeing them again.

There are of course circumstances where no solution will be happy for everyone. But there has to be some sort of legislation, and no-one has really come up with a viable alternative. I can't think of one myself.

I just know that if dh took my kids to the other side of the world I would fight tooth and claw for however long it took to get them back.

Yep same experience here.

Maryz you've missed a bit. It's not because they have never officially lived there (as gone to school) that Australia is a foreign country to them.

Yes it is very far away.
Yes it does restrict contact.
but then how often do you think children whose parents live on each side of the UK see the NRP? 5 ~6 weeks a year. About the length of the summer hols.

Load of parents commute every single weekend to see children across England, 52 weekends at a year.

I certainly was not saying never marry a foreigner but in terms of marriage break down different culture and values tends to make break down more ilkely and the chances one parent will want to take them back to their original home country is much higher if that person is a foreigner. It's why your traditional Indian or Jewish matchmaker would always look for shared culture, values, caste, religion, etc Obviously we if never married outside our own village we'd all have the disabilities of those Pakinstanis in the UK wedded to first cousin marriage. Gene mixing genetically is a good thing. Ghenghis Khan did it in traditional fashion by raping and pillaging across Europe although he did not stick around to help with the night feeds.

Indeed, I knew children born and raised in the country in which I grew up who were waiting to leave school so they could return "home" to university. And they did so, and never left. Cultural identification with parents, and in particular the mother, is usually the strongest cultural identification a child has.

What about my alternative? That the solution you have is tailored to the circumstances instead of being a 'No you can't take that child' and that's it?

How about acknowledging that some parents can be obtuse and use that rule just to 'get' at the other parent?
And that the best interest of the children isn't always to see both parents on a regular basis (or to force one parent to stay in a country that isn't theirs).

I have seen that happening in France. One rule = 50/50 custody, regardless of the situation. Abusive partner using that rule to get at the other parent. Using that rule to call the police and having them put in jail for the night because they brought the dcs back 2 hours late? Or refusing to have a RP when one of the parent has been abusive to the children?
All that because the starting point is 50/50 custody and that's 'WHAT IS BEST FOR THE CHILDREN' which means that individual circumstances aren't taken into account (unless completely obvious).

It's the same here. You can not say the children should be living in Italy because 'IT IS BEST FOR CHILDREN TO STAY WHERE THEY LIVE'. No one on here has no idea about that. See Bonsoir and my posts about how bi national children can feel.
Just as it is not obvious if the father is using the Hague convention just 'to get at the mum' or for very compassionate reasons, with the the best interests of the dcs in mind.

Lady, the oldest child was 13 when her mum moved her to Australia. She was born in Italy, she had spent her whole life in Italy, she went to school in Italy.

In fact her mum gave an interview saying it was hard for them to settle in Australia when they first got there because Italian was their native language.

I'd say that makes her pretty Italian.

Honestly, MaryZed, you cannot know.

Maryz have ever lived abroad? Have or being in contact with people who have lived abroad with their dcs, or who grew up in a foreign country?

The rules that you have about children who are uni national (is there such a word?) can not be applied to multi national/multicultural children.

Again, my dcs are born in the UK, are going to school in the UK to a UK school. They have spent all their life in the UK.

But if you ask them they will tell you that they are both british and french. Which they are both because they have dual citizenship and because they are being brought up in a bicultural/bilingual environment.