Girl’s return to Sri Lanka is first in response to Hague Convention court order
A 5-year-old girl was returned to live with her Japanese father in Sri Lanka in early April after being abducted by her mother and brought to Japan, a government official told The Japan Times on Wednesday. It was the first time Japan fulfilled a court order mandating the return of a child to his or […]
State of the reunion: Evaluating the Hague pact’s success
More than a year has passed since Japan officially adopted the Hague Convention on child abductions and while the number of reported cases has fallen over the past 12 months, the government is still finding its feet on this complex issue. As most parents know, there is nothing quite so life changing as having children. […]
Custody case a test for Japan, says U.S. father seeking access to girl held by grandmother
A U.S. man seeking access to his daughter said Monday that the case is an opportunity for Japan to prove to the world it no longer tolerates parental child abduction. U.S. Navy Cmdr. Paul Toland is suing the mother of his Japanese ex-wife for denying access to his 13-year-old daughter. His former wife left with […]
Two years after Japan signed Hague, children have been returned but old issues remain
‘What brand of Champagne did you drink?” The lawyer delivered the question with a dramatic flourish, and I suppose it was a reasonable question to ask, even if rhetorically. I was being cross-examined as an expert witness in a child custody-related trial in a Western courtroom. One parent wanted to relocate to Japan with the […]
Help for those seeking left-behind parents in Japan
Two adult daughters contacted Lifelines hoping to get help with issues related to their fathers. One is looking for information pertaining to a legal case over her late father’s health while he served in the U.S. armed forces in Okinawa. First, however, is M.Z., the daughter of a foreign mother and Japanese father. She was […]
Three years after Japan signed Hague, parents who abduct still win
As he sat waiting in a van near his estranged wife’s family home in Nara, where his four children were living, James Cook felt very alone. It was an emotion he’d become all too accustomed to in the years since his wife had taken the children on a holiday to Japan and never returned, leaving […]
Japan’s Supreme Court hands down a road map for parental child abductions
In 2014, after years of diplomatic pressure and countless horror stories about parents losing all contact with children taken to or retained in Japan, the nation finally joined the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. This should have relegated to history Japan’s growing reputation as a “black hole” of abduction of […]
Supreme Court breaks new ground, ruling in favor of U.S.-based Japanese father in international custody battle
The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday in favor of a U.S.-based Japanese father seeking to reunite with his teenage son, who was taken by his estranged wife to Japan in 2016, concluding that the wife’s dogged refusal to abide by an earlier court order mandating the minor’s repatriation amounts to her “illegally confining” him. The […]
Japan’s Supreme Court orders a child be sent home in a Hague parental abduction case. Maybe.
On March 15, Japan’s Supreme Court issued an important decision in a case arising under the Hague Convention on child abduction. Except it wasn’t about the convention, but about habeas corpus. Most press accounts have characterized the ruling as ordering that a child brought to Japan by his mother be returned to the United States, […]
U.S. cites Japan for noncompliance with Hague treaty on cross-border parental child abductions
WASHINGTON – The U.S. State Department on Wednesday listed Japan as one of the countries showing a pattern of noncompliance with the so-called Hague treaty, which sets procedures to settle cross-border parental child abduction cases. Japan joined the Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction in 2014, and it is the first time since […]