Case Update (3 Jan 2025): Ikezogwo v. Fatiregun; Child ordered returned from Pennsylvania to UK under Abduction Convention
The parties are parents to one 11 year old son. The parties have lived, during their child’s life, in several countries, including the United States, Italy, Senegal, Ghana, and even Germany. The latter countries were perhaps not selected by the parties as their residence, and were the result of the Respondent Father having contracted a severe case of COVID-19 in 2021, and the family being evacuated from Senegal, where they had been residing for Petitioner Mother’s work with the World Bank. The Father was in a medically-induced coma for several months, and while he was in the hospital in Germany, the Mother and Child traveled to Berlin, and, in September 2021, relocated to the United Kingdom, where both parties have family, and where Father and child both hold citizenship. Mother ultimately obtained British residency, as well.
The child was enrolled in School in the UK from October 2021 until his arrival for a scheduled 2-week trip to the USA in July 2024. It was in October 2022, that the Father moved from the UK to Philadelphia. During his residence in Pennsylvania, the child had traveled a few times to see him, returning to the UK at the end of each trip. During this time, the parents had an ongoing conflict related to the child’s private school in the UK, and, in particular, its costs. The Father suggested that they enroll the child in free, public school in Philadelphia, but they never came to any agreement. When the child traveled to Philadelphia in July 2024, the parents ultimately agreed to extend his trip so he could remain in Philadelphia until school was scheduled to resume in the UK in September. The child was registered for exams in fall 2024 in Britain and scheduled for a February 2025 ski trip with his class. The child did not return.
The Father argued that the UK was not the child’s habitual residence because the child had been relocated there while he was hospitalized, “without his consent” and that “the parties had no plans to live in the United Kingdom.” The court noted, however, that “the Supreme Court is clear that no agreement between parents is required to show habitual residence.” The court found that the child was at home in the UK at the time of his retention in the USA. The Father separately offered evidence that the Mother “has hit” the child as a form of punishment or discipline. The court noted that, even if it took that assertion as true, “courts have been reluctant to apply the grave harm exception in cases where the alleged harm is corporal punishment.”
The court ordered the child returned to the UK, and ordered that the Mother is entitled to reimbursement of her costs and fees under ICARA. The court reviewed her submitted receipts and noted that it will not order “reimbursement” for the child’s “school fees” and certain other expenses that were unrelated to the proceedings. It questioned some of her costs, and ordered it would not reimburse her for travel costs paid by points or miles or other non-monetary forms of currency. The court is permitting her to resubmit receipts.
