Case Update (18 April 2023): Maduhu v. Maduhu; Father did not acquiesce and children are therefore returned to the UK under the Hague Abduction Convention
In December 2021, the Mother brought the parties’ two children to Texas for a holiday. She recalls telling the Father, at Heathrow Airport, that she needed to be away until she becomes well, and that she may potentially not return. She had recently suffered a mental breakdown. Both parents testified that they expected the children to return to the UK on January 6, 2022, and that the Mother ultimately requested they remain in Texas longer. The Father consented, consulted the children’s UK school, learned that they must return to school no later than February 25, 2022, and therefore purchased a new return ticket for February 22, 2022. The children did not get on that plane. The Father filed his return petition in the court on February 3, 2023. The Mother stipulated that the Father had met his burden to establish her wrongful retention of the children. She argued that the children were now settled and that the Father acquiesced.
The court acknowledged that the now settled exception is unavailable to the Mother (Father filed within one year of the wrongful retention), but nonetheless went through the academic exercise of analyzing whether the children were settled, and concluded that they were not. As for the Father’s alleged acquiescence, the court also concluded that he did not acquiesce when he visited the children in Texas, sent the children’s immunization records to the Mother so she could enroll them in a Texas school, and paid child support. The Court stated that to find these acts were acquiescence would be to jeopardize a child’s welfare just to argue against the acquiescence exception in nearly every abduction case.