Family Impact

Beyond the Court Order

‍This document catalogues the issues that can affect families subject to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, herein after simply called the Hague Convention for brevity. This list was compiled by the Hague Collective based on years of research and interviews with individuals directly impacted by the Hague Convention.‍‍ ‍

Public discussion surrounding Hague Convention proceedings often focuses on whether a child should be returned to their country of habitual residence and which court should ultimately decide custody.‍‍ ‍

Far less attention is given to what families experience before, during, and long after those legal proceedings conclude.‍‍ ‍

Over the past several decades, researchers, legal scholars, international human rights experts, and families themselves have described recurring challenges that may arise throughout this process. Together, these perspectives provide a more complete understanding of how Hague Convention proceedings affect children and families in practice.

The experiences described below do not occur in every case, nor are they unique to Hague proceedings. Rather, they represent issues that have been documented in academic research, legal scholarship, international human rights discussions, and the lived experiences of affected families.‍ ‍

Before Proceedings

Many Hague Convention proceedings begin long before a case reaches a courtroom. Families may already be navigating complex circumstances involving domestic violence, coercive control, immigration challenges, financial dependence, or international relocation. Understanding these circumstances provides important context for how Hague cases develop and why some families seek to cross international borders.‍‍ ‍

Many Hague Convention cases arise within complex family situations that may involve:

• Domestic violence

  • Hitting

  • Forced pregnancy

  • Thrown down stairs

  • Bones broken

  • Children assaulted

• Coercive control

  • Playing games with the abused parent to convince them it is not okay to leave and/or they will get in trouble for doing so (explained and elaborated on well by NNEDV here)

  • Using religion to trap people

  • Parent refuses to sign passports, forcing children to pass time in a country, making it their “habitual residence” under the Convention

• Financial abuse

  • Every cent is tracked by current partner

  • Not allowed to carry cash

  • Not allowed to spend money on certain things

  • Forced to show receipts to partner

• Immigration dependency, meaning they may not be legally allowed to stay in the foreign country without sponsorship from their abuser

• Physical inability to leave country unless partner signs passports

• Isolation from support networks

• Threats involving children

• Language barriers

• Limited access to legal information

  • Never heard of Hague Abduction Convention

  • May not be able to pay a lawyer for a consultation without current partner finding out

  • May have phone and/or computer monitored by current partner

• Expiration of legal immigration status requiring the parent to return to their home country with the children

• A birth that took place in a foreign country because the parent became trapped or travel was unsafe for the pregnant mother and fetus, i.e. travel restrictions or safety concerns during covid, unexpected pregnancy complications “grounding” the mother

• Out of options: the Hagued parent may have already gone to police, etc. asking for help to no avail before deciding the only thing left to do was to seek safety and support in their home country

Some parents report learning about the Hague Convention only after legal proceedings have already begun.

During Proceedings

Hague proceedings often move quickly and involve legal systems operating across multiple countries.

Parents who are or been the target of Hague proceedings initiated by a former partner are informally called “Hagued parents”. Hagued parents may face significant legal, financial, practical, and emotional challenges while navigating unfamiliar procedures, often under tight deadlines and with limited access to resources or specialized legal representation.

Hagued parents may face these challenges in defending themselves and their families during legal proceedings.

Legal Challenges

• Locating qualified legal counsel is frequently a considerable challenge for Hagued parents who must defend themselves or their actions.

  • Familiar with the Hague Convention – some attorneys may have a passing familiarity with what the Hague Convention purports to accomplish, but many have no knowledge or experience with defending Hagued parents or knowledge or experience of how the Convention is actually carried out in their home country or foreign countries

  • Familiar with tactics used by abusers - many attorneys are themselves not able to recognize signs of domestic abuse, and lack the skills to clearly demonstrate to a judge the severity of the abuse that is presented to the court

    • Trying to pass off inauthentic documents as “foreign authentic documents”: Many parents have reported not being believed that certain documents were not valid, and that the Hague judge ultimately relied on these inauthentic documents to reach a return decision.

    • Coercive control, a pattern of acts and behaviors that abusers use to take away a survivor’s ability to control their life (explained well here)

    • Manipulative tactics abusers use during testimony to look like the victim (manipulative perjury to tell half-truths that paint a completely different picture)

  • Understanding of the underlying meaning not explicitly stated in foreign legal documents (for example, a US birth certificate does not explicitly state that the person is a citizen of the USA, but an American lawyer could infer from the birth certificate that the person must be a USA citizen)

• Judges who lack the same skills as listed above

• Self-representation

  • Not knowing how to properly “enter” evidence into court

  • Evidence not properly “entered” cannot be used in appeals

  • Not understanding how to properly write briefs or how to challenge interpretations of the law

  • Not having time to do a job or care for children or self-care because constantly researching how to defend themselves

  • Relying on artificial intelligence to write briefs and respond in court

• Court case treated as “parental conflict” rather than acknowledging that there is a clear plaintiff and defendant: things like not hearing the case before a jury before declaring one parent to have abducted the child, and/or requiring both parents to submit written closing briefs simultaneously, prohibiting the defendant from being able to respond to accusations that may be raised for the first time during closing arguments before a decision is issued

• Legal costs

  • Financial challenges in trying to pay for qualified legal counsel in multiple court proceedings that can stretch on for years, while attempting to support one or more child on a single income, or no income

  • Difficulty getting pro bono lawyers because the case is “too complicated” to qualify for legal aid due to the international component

  • Being denied access to marital funds during court proceedings while the ex uses marital funds for their own top-of-the-line lawyer

• Emergency court proceedings, often with insufficient time to adequately prepare or find a lawyer

• Navigating multiple legal systems simultaneously, a very significant drain on time and money for the Hagued parent

  • “Being Hagued” in both state and federal courts, with the case moving between these two systems, sometimes requiring the parent to find a new lawyer who can practice in the other court system

  • Simultaneously going through both civil and criminal proceedings in the foreign country that they left

    • Initiating suits against the ex-partner

    • Hagued parent defending themselves against lawsuits brought against them

    • If all of the above happen, it adds up to defending civil and criminal actions in foreign country, initiating lawsuits against ex in foreign country, and having their Hague case in the USA, which may pass from state to federal, or vice versa

  • Managing all the legal teams for each court case or self-representing everywhere, in many cases educating the legal teams on the Hague Convention as well

Practical Challenges

• Housing instability, especially with high court costs

• Loss of employment, especially due to:

  • Physically managing all these legal teams, usually needing to respond, manage teams and draft or edit briefs within days. Properly managing legal teams through these uncharted waters can effectively be a full-time job in itself

  • The physical and psychological stress of needing to be hyper focused to not lose their child(ren) to their abuser

  • Being a good (effectively single) parent to their child(ren) during all this

  • Urgently being contacted by legal counsel to repeatedly search through volumes of old records of exchanges with ex-partner (emails and texts)

  • If the Hagued parent has no income and can’t pay bills, they may lose their legal counsel, suddenly losing multiple cases, which can result in losing child custody, being ordered to pay their ex child support, losing appeals, being ordered to pay additional money

• Immigration concerns

  • How they will physically return if ordered, if it conflicts with immigration law of the foreign country or requires them to submit to/beg their abuser for help

• Language barriers

  • Translating everything in English for American courts

  • Translating everything into another language for the foreign court

  • Finding a lawyer in the foreign country with all the necessary expertise to adequately represent them and explaining everything to a lawyer who doesn’t speak English

  • Finding a lawyer who speaks English but who possibly is not the most powerful lawyer to speak before the judge

Family Challenges

• Uncertainty regarding custody

• Disrupted schooling

• Separation from support systems

• Stress from these high-stakes legal issues invariably negatively affects Hagued parents’ health as well, including leading to insomnia, anxiety, depression, high blood pressure and other related ailments

• Parent-child relationships also may become strained in these circumstances due to the Hagued parent having less time and energy for the child, less money, etc.

• Stress on children’s mental health may also result from these circumstances: children may be too young to understand what is going on between their parents, or, in cases of older children, they may fear being sent back to a parent who was abusive to them or who they witnessed abusing their protective parent

• Child may be years in the Hagued parent’s country, with little contact with the left-behind parent, then returned by court order, disrupting the child’s life again

‍Additionally in some cases, Hagued parents don’t have legal immigration status in the country they removed their child from. In Hague proceedings against them, Hagued parents may be confused about the validity of the cases or how to proceed, if there is no legal way for them to also return to the child’s country.  

‍This is often the case when the immigration status was originally through marriage to a spouse who was abusive. Judges presiding over Hague cases sometimes try to remedy this through “undertakings” or “ameliorative measures” in which they order the abusive parent to “help” their victim in some way to return (i.e. ordering the abusive parent to “get immigration” for their victim or “co-sign a lease” upon the return of the other parent).

However, these decisions are problematic at least in two ways:

1. they assume it is acceptable to force a victim and their children out of their country to be separated from their support network and sent alone to a foreign country where the victim must rely on their abuser for day-to-day living necessities, and

2. the decision is being made by a judge who, by ordering the return, is effectively deciding that this same judge “does not have jurisdiction to decide for this family” and therefore undermines their own authority to decide undertakings.

In fact, USA court orders are not enforceable outside of the United States unless a foreign judge agrees and issues a similar order. But even then, some American judges have believed that “mirror orders” had been issued, while parents reported that the American judges did not understand the foreign court order, and that it did not guarantee the protections that the American judge thought that it did.

After Proceedings

Long-Term Experiences Following Hague Proceedings

For many families, a Hague decision marks the beginning—not the end—of a much longer journey. While Hague proceedings are designed to determine whether a child should be returned to their country of habitual residence, far less attention is often given to what happens after a return order is issued.

‍The Convention is frequently described as restoring the child to the "status quo" that existed before the international removal or retention. In practice, however, researchers, survivor accounts, and international human-rights discussions suggest that some families experience significant changes to their lives following Hague proceedings. Depending on the circumstances of the case, families may face ongoing legal disputes, financial hardship, immigration barriers, family separation, or continued safety concerns long after the initial court proceeding has concluded.

The following sections summarize some of the long-term experiences that have been described in research, legal scholarship, and survivor-informed discussions.

Access to Justice

Once the Hagued parent is labeled a “child abductor” from losing their Hague case, it may be difficult to get justice when judges and justice systems form legal and mental biases against the Hagued parent.

• The Hagued parent is labeled a “child abductor”

• ‍ The court rules that the Hagued parent was wrong to bring the child to their home country

  • Such a ruling can be later used to claim civil or criminal “crime against the child”

    • Loss of custody can and does often result

    • Prison time may result

  • Blamed for divorce – Hagued parent may lose access to what would have been their share of marital assets if they had been a national of the other country

• Reasons for leaving may be effectively erased as possible defenses. This can happen when the Hagued parent returns to the foreign court, the foreign judge may think domestic violence must not have been present or else the child would not have been returned. This can effectively silence the Hagued parent from having grievances or safety concerns taken seriously.

• A foreign judge may wonder what they missed, if, for example, USA court sends a USA citizen child out of the USA to potentially be forever separated from the USA parent, creating a further bias towards the foreign parent in the foreign court

• In fact, the entire Convention was created because of the fear that parents may “forum shop” because of the bias of judges in cases involving citizens of their own country verses foreign nationals. Under this logic, foreign courts may assume, even if incorrectly, that an American court would have a favorable bias towards a USA citizen. Labeling, then, a USA citizen parent a “child abductor” and sending away a USA citizen child can create an even worse bias against American parents in foreign courts, as foreign judges uphold the idea that the removal was illegal and unjustified, as determined “even” by an American judge.

• Ex parte proceedings against parents without representation

• Parents not being able to adequately cross-examine accusations made against them (having to sit in the hall while the judge speaks with their ex during the trial)

• Not being able to navigate a foreign system to find the right lawyer

• Not being able to afford a lawyer

• Not being eligible for legal aid

• Navigating social services with their own bias and cultural expectations

• Immigration concerns or not being able to be present for court hearing

• Language barriers, including no court translator (especially for civil proceedings) or court documents

• Financial costs associated with cross-border litigation

  • Foreign housing

  • Travel

  • Translations

  • Time spent

• If the child lived with both parents before, but one parent fled abuse, the parent cannot be reasonably expected to return to the “status quo” of living with the abuser

• If the parent lived with both parents before, likely the child will now go with one or the other, or the time somehow split between the two

• The Hagued parent may not be able to get previous employment back

• The Hagued parent may not have ever understood how to navigate finding housing, employment, etc., especially if relied previous on spousal sponsorship

• Spousal immigration and financial sponsorship often does not continue after separation

• Self-representation in foreign country after return

  • Not knowing how to properly “enter” evidence into court

  • Evidence not properly “entered” cannot be used in appeals

  • Not understanding how to properly write briefs or how to challenge interpretations of the law

  • Representing themselves in a language that is foreign to them

  • Representing themselves in a different culture

  • Not having time to do a job or care for children or self-care because constantly researching how to defend themselves

  • Relying on artificial intelligence to write briefs and respond in court

  • Sometimes doing without access to computer or stable housing, i.e. living in a homeless shelter and not knowing where to shower before court hearing

• Since the case involved minor children, gag order from speaking out to ask community for help (legal, financial, etc.) or to raise awareness so that the same thing doesn’t happen to others

• “Possession is nine tenths of the law.” Hagued parents often immediately lose custody after return because they are labeled “child abductors.” Many appeal this decision for years, but after a significant amount of time has passed in the other parent’s custody, even if they can prove later that they are a fit parent or if the child asks for them, courts may not grant custody anyway due to the fact that the child has now lived for so long with the other parent. Justice delayed is justice denied.

Note that this often applies after return when courts are assessing “best interest of the child.” This concept usually does not apply during Hague Convention cases, in which years may pass but the child still returned, as long as the case was filed in a timely manner. After return, courts have even kept children with parents found by the courts to have committed abuse in order to prioritize “stability” for the child. Thus, many children continue today to live with parents who have been alleged – or even found by the court - to have committed acts of violence. The cases are considered closed.

Family Separation

‍Some children experience prolonged separation from a parent, caregiver, extended family members, community networks, language, or culture. Many of the children sent back to the other country are never seen again by the Hagued parent. Contact is severed permanently the moment of return.

Children are often raised not speaking the Hagued parent’s language to not even be able to communicate with the Hagued parent or extended family members if future contact ever happens.

If the children age out of the system and become adults, children who cannot remember the Hagued parent or who don’t associate with the Hagued parent’s culture sometimes don’t have the desire to suddenly form a relationship, even as adults.

Immigration & Legal Status

• ‍Visa issues, residency barriers prohibiting the Hagued parent from legally returning with the child after court-ordered return (Hagued parent ordered to return child to a country where the Hagued parent does not have legal immigration status to return)

  • In some cases a parent returns despite legal barriers to return and attempts to live “off the radar”

    • Constant threat of being caught, can’t go back and forth to their own country once they successfully return with their children

    • Can’t have housing contract

    • Can’t have bank account

    • High risk of further abuse with third parties (landlords, employers, ex, etc.) taking advantage

    • Can’t go to police for help with anything, even if being severely abused

    • Many parents live this way to be in the country to continue to litigate and defend themselves and their child in the country to which their children were returned

    • Child may be sent alone – sometimes parent unable to enter the country to which their child is returned

• Employment restrictions

  • Due to lack of work authorization in foreign country

  • Due to Hague court finding of “child abduction” (even if “only civil” the label of “child abduction” can ruin entire professional careers)

  • Due to no time because too busy defending against post-separation litigation abuse for years

Economic Impact

Hagued families may experience:

• Substantial legal debt

  • Multiple courts in multiple countries

  • Private lawyers

    • Specialized

    • Inability to get assistance for pro bono help for survivors of domestic violence after Hague court ruling that they are a “child abductor” – organizations might be afraid to help

  • Long-term substandard living as a result of funds or debt expended for court proceedings

• Housing instability

  • Lack of legal immigration status to obtain housing contract

  • Limited funds can result in poorer quality housing, or housing in rough areas

  • Homeless shelters, if they qualify

  • Inability to get assistance for housing for survivors of domestic violence after Hague court ruling that they are a “child abductor” – organizations afraid to help

• Financial hardship

  • Sometimes economic stability needed to renew immigration status

  • Making day-to-day choices on substandard housing, transportation, and food to stretch limited financial resources

  • Being forced to manage finances on a short term basis, unable to save or plan for the future

  • Getting dropped by lawyers when run out of money

• Difficulty rebuilding economic security

  • years and years of post-separation legal abuse

  • loss of career and possible income – lifelong economic consequences

  • psychological hardship and physical health problems

Child Wellbeing

Children of Hagued parents can have these negative effects on their health and wellbeing:

• Children may be returned to parents accused of abuse, sometimes to parents even found by a court to have committed the abuse

• Separated from the Hagued parent, extended family, and cut off from that part of the child’s cultural heritage, including language

• Lifelong permanent severance of family relationships and cultural heritage

• Raised in the mentality that the Hagued parent is “evil” and not wanting contact when they are grown

• Risk of being physically and psychologically abused

• Risk of lowered self-esteem, depression, and trouble forming healthy relationships as an adult

Ongoing Litigation

Many families remain involved in custody disputes, enforcement proceedings, or related legal matters for years after Hague proceedings conclude.

• Ongoing legal proceedings until the child is “mature and independent”

  • Sometimes extends even beyond 18 years old

  • For parents of infants, can result in literally decades of their lives revolving around the litigation

  • Difficult to “move on as if nothing has happened” even after the child has aged out of the system

• Post-separation legal abuse (use of the child by a parent to continue to control and hurt the other parent, with the child as collateral damage)

Safety Concerns

Domestic violence advocates and human-rights experts have raised concerns regarding family safety in some Hague cases involving allegations of abuse, coercive control, or post-separation violence.

Upon return, the Hagued parent often loses custody and/or is forced to continue to interact with their abuser in a significant and ongoing way.

• Lack of physical safety for children

• Lack of physical safety for parent

• In abusive relationships, both the abuser and the victim have learned that authorities won’t intervene to stop the abuse

• Mental and physical health challenges

  • Loss or disruption of connection with children

  • Forced back to foreign country

    • Loss of support network

    • Unfamiliar surroundings, language, people, culture, customs, institutions, job market

  • Feeling of betrayal from former romantic partner and home country

  • Forced to defend against civil and criminal accusations against themselves for trying to flee situations in which they and their children were severely abused

  • Feeling like there is nothing they can do to escape – this can increase risk of suicide

  • Risk of serious physical abuse continuing or even being murdered

• Sometimes the Hagued parent is told to rely on their former partner who was abusive/violent – undertakings from Hague judge

  • Violent parent provides housing – but he has a key and can enter at any time. Victim cannot call police because abuser has “right to enter” because he has co-signed the lease or owns the home.

  • Abuser does not “help get immigration” citing the fact that they do not control immigration law

Why Long-Term Outcomes Matter

For many observers, a Hague proceeding ends when the court issues a return decision. The legal process is designed to restore the child to their country of habitual residence so that custody and related issues can be addressed by the appropriate court.

For many families, however, the return decision is not the end of the story, but rather the beginning of a new and often uncertain chapter. The months and years that follow may involve ongoing custody litigation, immigration challenges, financial hardship, family separation, or continued concerns about safety and wellbeing.

Understanding what happens after Hague proceedings conclude can help researchers, policymakers, legal professionals, advocates, and the public better understand the full impact of these cases on children and families.

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