The UK’s Supreme Court has recently given its ruling in a long-running international child custody dispute that has seen the child in question move back and forth between the USA and UK.
The case involved a child, K, who was born in 2006 in Texas and is a United States citizen. His father is also a US citizen; his mother came to the UK from Ghana as a very young child and she has indefinite leave to remain in the UK. They married in Texas in December 2005 and lived together there.
The marriage broke up and in March 2008 the father issued divorce proceedings in the Texas state court. That court made orders by consent providing for the mother to take care of K (in the former matrimonial home) while the father was posted abroad on military service. In July 2008 she took him to London.
In March 2010 a welfare-based custody hearing took place in the Texas court in which both parents were represented. The judge in those proceedings decided that it was in K’s best interests that he reside with his father and have contact with his mother. As a result K moved back to the US.
The mother applied to the US Federal District Court for an order under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (‘the Convention’), alleging that K had been habitually resident in the UK in March 2010 and that K had been wrongfully retained in Texas by the father.
She won her case and the father complied with the order to return K and his passport to the mother, whereupon the mother returned to the UK with K and they have lived here ever since.
The father appealed against the order and in July 2012 the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned the decision of the District Court, which then ordered K’s return to the US. When the mother did not comply, the father issued applications under the Convention in the UK.
The case eventually reached the Supreme Court, which has now ruled unanimously in favour of the father and ordered the return of K to the US.
This return is on the basis of the undertakings offered by the father to enable the mother to live in Texas, independently of the father and sharing the care of K between them, pending any application she might make to the Texas court to modify the order relating to K’s residence.
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