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United States Legal Analysis Of The Hague Convention

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When there is evidence that the wellbeing of a child would be endangered by a parent then sole or singular custody should be the preference over joint custody, also when there is proof that a parent has been abused and flees with a child that child should not be returned to the abusive parent. Over the years the U.S. has changed it procedure concerning grave risk of harm regarding Hague cases and found it not in the child’s best interest to be ordered to return to a domestic violence situation without a full investigation of the nature of the abuse and “of the likelihood that the authorities in the country to which the children are being returned will indeed fully protect them and their abused mother”. [1]

“The U.S. Department of States Legal Analysis of the Hague Convention (51 Fed. Reg. 10494 (1986)) prepared for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to which the Convention was referred, confirms the intention that Article 13 was intended to be afforded a narrow interpretation. In this regard the State Department stated that the drafters were aware that any exceptions had to be drawn very narrowly lest their application undermine the express purposes of the Convention to effect the prompt return of abducted children; that it was generally believed that courts would understand and fulfill the objectives of the Convention by narrowly interpreting the exceptions that Article 13(b) was not intended to be used by defendants as a vehicle to litigate (or relitigate) the

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