Cross-Border Child Custody: How to Protect your child.

Relationships that bring forth a child, often span different times, social statuses, and even geographical and political boundaries. Cross-border child custody cases occur when relationships that cut across territorial boundaries, with children involved, come to an end.

Cross-border child custody also happens when parents to a child, who were once living together in the same country, experience separation with one parent moving to a different country. It can also happen when either of the child’s parents seeks to travel to another country temporarily or permanently.

The challenge with cross-border child custody is that the parents have to work with multiple laws from multiple countries and sometimes different sets of lawyers for each country. This situation is made worse by the fact that the child’s parents do not trust each other.

The purpose of this article is to give some guidelines to you who may be facing a case that may potentially involve cross-border or international child custody.

THE CARDINAL POINT

The most important advice I can give to you in cross-border child custody is to have matching court orders across all the countries involved. Let me give you an example. 

I once represented a client who was living in Zambia. The father of her child was a Kenyan living in Kenya. She was reluctant to have the father of her child travel with the child out of Zambia to Kenya as she believed he would decline to bring the child back to Zambia. She had obtained custodial orders for the child in Zambia.

To facilitate travel for the child outside Zambia, we had to negotiate a parental responsibility agreement. 

This agreement was drafted in identical terms to the court orders that the Zambian lawyers had obtained. The agreement was then filed in court and adopted as a court order in the Kenyan courts. The idea behind to ensure the child was protected in the event the father traveled with the child to Kenya and declined to bring the child back to Zambia.

The above example explains to you why it is important to have identical court orders in all the countries in which the child is expected to pass through or reside.

STOPPAGE ORDERS

In addition to getting identical court orders in the country where the child will pass through or reside, you need to get specific orders barring the child from traveling to any other country apart from the countries allowed by the court.

Using the example given above, I processed a stoppage order compelling the Kenyan immigration department at the Airport, to decline to stamp out the child to any other country apart from Zambia. Our counterparts also got similar orders in Zambia. This prevents the possibility of a parent using a destination country recognised by court orders of another country, as a transit point to a different unrecognized country.

CONCLUSION: THE BEST INTEREST OF A CHILD

The Children’s Act provides that in all actions done by anyone, including the courts of law, the best interest of the child is of paramount consideration. The best interest of a child means all the activities that are aimed at promoting the development and protection of the child.

While the above processes may seem to be cumbersome and lengthy, it often pays to err on the side of caution and protection to the child. In the next article, I will discuss how to enforce child custody and maintenance orders across borders.