A number of countries have signed the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. The agreement establishes that a child under 16 who resides in one country and is taken to another country will be returned if one of the parents objects to the child´s removal. The agreement is only valid between countries that have signed the Convention.
A list of the countries that have adopted the convention is available at www.hcch.net.
This doesn’t mean that parents cannot agree to reside in different countries once they separate. But it does mean that if the child goes to live outside of the country where he or she has been residing, there must be an agreement in place that clearly and convincingly presents both parents’ consent to the situation. Even then, there is no guarantee that the agreement will not be challenged.
[...] Abduction: Time Magazine Questions the Hague Convention Thirty years ago, when the Hague Convention on international child abduction came into being, it was assumed that the typical abductor was a [...]