Case Update (28 March 2025): Correa Morales v. Escobar Restrepo; agreement was conditioned on location in US and visits to Colombia; therefore no consent unless conditions were met
The parties are parents to one child, LC, born in January 2020 in Miami, Florida. By the end of 2021, they had moved to Medellin, Colombia. The parties ultimately separated in August 2022, and moved into their respective mothers’ houses in Colombia by November 2022. When they separated, the Respondent Mother indicated “on multiple occasions that she wanted to move back to the United States, in part to find work in her field.” The parties engaged in 27 joint sessions with a marriage counsel between May 2023 and May 2024. In or around November 2023, when Respondent Mother decided to finally move to the United States, the Petitioner left her several voicemail messages and a subsequent text message, all imploring Respondent for more details about her plans to move to the United States. During their marriage counseling sessions, they discussed potential aspects of the Respondent’s move to the USA. Ultimately, Respondent decided to move to Florida, not New York as was originally discussed, and she sold her car, advised the child’s daycare he would not return, and gave away some belongings in late 2023/early 2024. The Petitioner provided a written authorization, as required by Colombian law, for the child to travel to the USA from January 26, 2024 to May 15, 2024 for “tourism.” On April 28, 2024, he purchased tickets, with the Respondent Mother’s consent, for the child to travel from Orlando, Florida to Medellin Colombia on May 16, 2024. On May 14, 2024, the Respondent messaged Petitioner that the child would not be traveling to Colombia as planned. About one week earlier, the Respondent and LC had relocated from Florida to New York, and did not advise the Petitioner of her new address, fearing he would take the child back to Colombia. In August 2024, the Petitioner took the child on a trip to Florida, without Respondent’s consent, and sent a subsequent text to her saying, “I let him come here. And you and I had an agreement. That he would go on vacation to Colombia, where the whole family waits for him and loves him. That it was Florida. None of that was fulfilled. And I am not telling you because of threats or anything, they are just facts.”
The key issue in this case was whether the Petitioner consented to the child’s permanent relocation to the United States. Ultimately, the District Court concluded that the Petitioner granted limited consent to the child’s travel, but it was dependent on multiple conditions that were ultimately not satisfied. Therefore, the court concluded the child was required to be returned to Colombia. When the child traveled to the USA in January 2024, there was no shared intention that the child would change his habitual residence to the USA at that time. Ultimately the parties discussed a change, and agreed on certain conditions, including that the child live with Respondent in Florida and that the child travel from Florida to Colombia in mid-May, things that did not ultimately occur.
