Case studies on the 1980 Hague convention on the civil aspects of International child abduction

Abstract

The father seeks the return of his two children. The father is Greek and the mother is English. They began living together in 1988 and were married in 1998. They have two children aged 4 and 1. The couple lived in a luxurious villa adjoining a hotel of which the father was the manager during the tourist season and in a house in London in the winter. They continued this pattern of life until March 2002, when after the father's return to Greece, and unknown to him, the mother started divorce proceedings in England. In fact the mother went to considerable lengths to conceal from the father her intention not to return to Greece which she was due to do so in April 2002. The father sought a stay on the divorce proceedings and applied for the children's return under the Hague Convention. He contended that the family's habitual residence was Greece and that the house in London was not a family home but an investment property. Accordingly the mother's failure to return amounted a wrongful retention of the children under Art 3. The mother contended that the family were habitually resident in both Greece and England either concurrently or consecutively so that the return could not be considered "wrongful" for the purposes of the Convention.