BC Foreign Hague Child Abduction Recognition Lawyers deal with heartbreaking cases where children are often removed from a primary caregiver and spirited away to a new country. MacLean Law’s, BC International Hague Child Abduction And Enforcement Orders lawyers handle these cases with alacrity. A rare number of these difficult cases involve foreign family order recognition. Too many family law clients struggle to find the best lawyers.
Be Smart Hire The Best BC Foreign Hague Child Abduction Recognition Lawyers
Hiring the Best Vancouver Family Lawyers like those at MacLean Law helps your outcome for success. Do your due diligence to select BC Foreign Hague Child Abduction Recognition Lawyers that have a history of winning and not just marketing.
Best Vancouver Family Lawyers
Our top BC foreign family order recognition lawyers also enforce or alternatively seek to supersede or refuse to recognize orders on child custody parenting and guardianship when such recognition or enforcement of orde4rs would be contrary to the children’s best interests on public policy, material change or serious harm to the child grounds. If you need the best BC Foreign Hague Child Abduction Recognition Lawyers, call us now as delay is often a negative in these emergency cases. Best Vancouver Family Lawyers help increase your chances of success.
Contact Fraser Maclean or founder Lorne MacLean KC in these heart wrenching cases to protect your children.
Vancouver Hague Child Abduction Lawyers Tel: 604 602 9000
MacLean Law won an interesting interjurisdictional, child parenting, and guardianship dispute, case involving a claim by the mother to not recognize and or to supersede enforcement of a Texas Superior Court family law order, where the children had been in British Columbia pursuant to that Texas court’s order for 4 1/2 years plus. Fraser MacLean and Lorne MacLean KC were successful for the children and their mother in blocking a return of the children to Texas on the grounds new evidence of her inability to remain primary parent would occur if the children were returned to Texas USA. This decision can be found here.
[91] Since British Columbia is the place where the Children most recently resided with one separated parent under an order of a court, British Columbia is where they are habitually resident. Thus, it is open to me to make a supersession order if there has been a change in circumstances that affects or is likely to affect the best interests of the Children since August 2, 2023.
[92] I note that the recent Court of Appeal decision in Laranjeira e Silva v. Virco, 2024 BCCA 164 addressed the related but different issue of the meaning of “habitual residence” under the Hague Convention in similar factual circumstances. In that case, the child was born in Brazil and living in Canada under an expired order of the Brazilian court. While the trial judge found Brazil was the “habitual residence”, the Court of Appeal reversed. While the Hague Convention analysis is not determinative of the statutory analysis under Division 7 of Part 4 of the FLA (as opposed to Division 8), there is a presumption that domestic law will be consistent with international law and so the Court of Appeal’s decision supports my statutory analysis.
BC International Hague Child Abduction And Enforcement Orders Tel: 604 602 9000
At one point, as a term of an adjournment, the children were permitted to leave BC to travel to Texas for a summer vacation with their father, based on an order that they would be returned to BC at the end of that summer holiday period that the father agreed to.
When the father refused to obey that court order, his application before the BC court to enforce a new Texas child parenting order, which had been adjourned, was dismissed with 100% special costs against the father on the merits including an assessment of parenting capacity and a history of family violence and because of the father’s failure to return the children to BC and their mother plus the shocking refusal of the Texas court’s to consider the wishes of the childrn under international law. The precedent setting reasons where a USA order was not enforced at all are found here.
[52] By contrast, I think I can come to the conclusion that the Texas Court did not consider the Children’s own views of their relocation, as required by s. 37(1)(b).
[53] In British Columbia, when determining the best interests of a child in relation to parenting arrangements, the child’s views must be considered, unless it would be inappropriate to consider them. That does not, of course, mean that the child’s views as to what is in their best interests will be determinative. But they must be given weight and they must be heard. This will be particularly the case for older children and for major decisions that will affect the child in a way that he or she can immediately perceive and understand. A relocation decision, especially one that will have the necessary effect of depriving them of their primary caregiver, would be at the high end of decisions for which the views of children capable of expressing them would be of greatest importance.
Justice Morley of the British Columbia Supreme Court, refused to recognize the Texas court order on the basis it was contrary to public policy in that the wishes of the children had not been considered, and on the basis that the children, if they continued to reside in Texas, would be separated from their primary caregiver for the last five years and that there was a past history fo family violence and other issues affecting the children’s father.
Vancouver Foreign Hague Child Abduction Recognition Lawyers
An international Hague Abduction application was then brought by the mother in Texas federal court, and the children were ordered returned to Canada, where their best interests could be more appropriately decided given their habitual residence here.
The complexity of these proceedings is akin to the fabled Gordian Knot. Accordingly, the
Court will attempt to cut the knot by recounting only necessary proceedings and orders based
upon the record before it. ………“The Convention is based on the principle that the best interests of the child
are well served when decisions regarding custody rights are made in the country of habitual
residence.” Abbott, 560 U.S. at 20. Here, decisions regarding custody rights should be made in
the country of habitual residence—Canada.
This case gives a window into the complexity of interjurisdictional child, parenting, and guardianship disputes, and how the Hague convention impacts state and provincial superior court decisions.
If you have a complex case involving international child custody and parenting, contact MacLean Law.
