International Child Abduction & Relocation

A: You must file a application at the Family Court which deals with your case, for a stop order, to prevent the children’s departure from the country and ask the Court to order your wife to deposit their passports in the Court safe or in your/her lawyer’s hands.

A: Yes. In urgent cases, even during the night, an order to delay departure from the country (i.e. a stop order) can be obtained, ex-parte, by a judge on duty, who can be reached through the chief secretary of the court.

No! “custody” and “custody rights” (referred to in the Hague Convention) are not the same. Even if you agree that your wife is the children’s sole custodian, it does not mean that you give up on your custody rights, namely, parental time, (contact and visitation) with the children. This point was made clear at the District Court in Lod, regarding the abduction of a minor daughter by her mother from the USA to Israel. The Court there clarified that since the father there, did not give up his right to have visitations and contact with his minor daughter, but just agreed for the mother to be the custodian, therefore at the time of the removal of the child from her country of origin (there-the USA) to Israel, the father was exercising his custody rights according to the Hague Convention (case # 2298-10-24).

Yes! According to the Israeli Law you are still the natural guardian of your minor children’ despite divorcing their mother, and although she is their custodian. The Hague Convention will be applicable if there is a breach of your visitation rights because of the abductions of your minor children abroad. The Convention is very efficient in returning abducted minors to their Country of habitual residence (here- Israel).

It saves time, money and heartache, avoids dragging out the legal process via appeals, and provides the opportunity for parties to create a basis for co-operation in the future.

In principle, the decision should be joint, because parents have shared and equal responsibility under Israeli law for deciding where a child should live. If they cannot agree, the parent wishing to move abroad must win a relocation plea filed against the other parent, but first will need to obtain custody, if he/she is not already the custodial parent.

Yes, child abduction is a criminal offence under the Penal Law of 1977, and a person who removes a minor under 16 from Israel, whether physically, or by temptation, from their custodian, without the latter’s agreement, can face up to 20 years imprisonment.

English courts take a very strict line in dealing with the use of ‘grave risk’ of psychological harm when dealing with child abduction defences.

Very strict. The Court of Appeal rejected an appeal by the mother, who had abducted her young child to England, against a High Court of Justice order for the minor’s return to Israel. Although the court of Appeal did recognize that there had been an escalation of violence, and that there were random and indiscriminate attacks, concentrating on major urban centres and public transport, it did say life went on as usual, and rejected the ‘grave risk’ of physical harm argument related to the terrorist attacks in Israel. It said that the number of deaths from road traffic accidents exceeded that from terror attacks.

The test of the ‘grave risk of harm’ defence provided for in the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of Child Abduction, by which both the U.S.A. and Israel are bound, is based on the ‘zone of war’ referred to in the 1996 Freidrich Case.