Ken Heffernan

Solicitors

Child Abduction To Japan Warning

Cork Family Law solicitor, Ken Heffernan, warns that the Hague Convention on Child Abduction may not be of any use to Irish parents where a child is illegally removed to or detained in Japan.
The comments follow a report in the UK from The Guardian concerning an English father trying to regain access to his daughters after their Japanese mother abducted them to her home country. The fact that Japan has not yet signed the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction will be a cause for concern for those parents from Ireland involved in similiar circumstances. The report asserts that the Japanese courts habitually find in favour of the custodial parent, usually the Japanese partner, making the chances of a return application succeeding quite low.

Takao Tanase, a law professor at Chuo University, is quoted as saying that:

“international pressure is unlikely to have much impact….. In Japan, if the child is secure in its new environment and doesn’t want more disruption, family courts don’t believe that it is in the child’s best interest to force it to see the non-custodial parent,”.

Ken advises that the central principle set out in the Hague Convention in wrongful removal or retention cases, where rights of custody are breached, is that the child should be returned to his or her place of habitual residence, where any issues in dispute can be dealt with by the relevant court. Ken says that while the Hague Convention is in force in Ireland under the Child Abduction and Enforcement of Court Orders Act, this will provide no assistance to the parent of a child wrongly removed to a non-convention country such as Japan.

However Ken points out that where an abduction is about to take place and the child is still in the country the Irish courts may be able to provide assistance by making appropiate injunction or wardship orders on an emergency basis.