Know Before You Relocate
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

This will depend on a lot of factors. While adults can usually freely travel and live where they want, subject to immigration laws, there may be laws in the foreign country that allow your spouse/partner to make it difficult for you to exit the country. There may also be immigration laws (or other laws) that make it easy for your spouse/partner to force you to return home. If you are in the other country because of your spouse/partner’s job, that employer may also have internal guidelines as to when it will no longer support their employee’s or the employee’s family living abroad.

This depends a lot on the legal authority you have to remain in that country independent of your spouse/partner. Are you dependent on their visa? Furthermore, this may depend on whether your relationship (marriage, civil union, legal partnership, etc.) is legally recognized in the country and how that impacts not only your ability to remain there, but what resources and rights you have in that country.

Relocating your child back to your home country implicates a complicated set of laws related to parental child abduction. Some of the factors that will impact whether you can relocate your child include: what agreement you had with the other parent in advance of your move abroad, whether that agreement was in writing, the laws in the country where you are residing, the laws in your home country, and even practical issues such as having access to the proper documents to travel with a child, which might include passports, visas, and travel authorization forms. There may be laws between the two countries that will force your child back to where your spouse/partner is located after your return home, so you will need a lot of planning before you simply return home with your child.

You may or may not be able to go to the courts in your home country. You may have to go to the courts in the foreign country. You may be able to go to multiple courts, but doing so might have some lasting legal implications for you and increase legal fees. There are a lot of complex rules that determine where you can and should seek custody of your child, and they are rarely intuitive.

This is a really complicated question, and even in the United States, this issue has been evolving with new court cases and law.  It is possible that, by moving, even if only for a temporary period of time, you are establishing a new home and that may make it more difficult for you to return with your child to your home country, despite your original agreement. You will need to ask questions about what might happen in this situation, and whether there are any written agreements you can put in place before your move to help ensure this return home can happen if your spouse/partner’s situation changes.

In many countries, couples routinely sign a contract at the time of their marriage – by choice, by law, or under the requirements of their religion – that says what happens with their finances if their marriage dissolves.  They believe this contract will protect them if they get divorced in the future. This may not be true, however. If you move from country-to-country, each new country will have different laws, and a different analysis, to decide whether to actually enforce the terms in this contract. Ideally, before moving overseas, you will have a capable lawyer review the contract to advise if it needs to be updated and whether it will protect you after your move.

Different countries, and even different states or provinces within a country, have different laws and requirements for what it takes to get a divorce.  These requirements can be quite complicated, and depend a lot on your family’s situation at the time you want a divorce.  There are not always clear-cut rules, and a lot may depend on your family’s connections to a particular country, including where you pay taxes, own real estate, maintain citizenship, where your children go to school, your length of residence, your intentions for the future, etc.  You may need to plan before your move as to what ties you keep in your home country and whether that could help you in the future by giving you appropriate connections to protect you if you want a divorce in the future.

Different countries and even different states and provinces within a country have different laws. In some places, you may be able to ask for spousal support (sometimes called alimony or maintenance). In some, you cannot. There may be different rules as to how much and for how long you may be eligible to receive support going forward, if it is even available. Even if you qualify for support, it may not last forever, and may not be enough for you to live without some type of additional income. It may also depend on where you used to work, where you will be living in the future, your education, health, age, and other factors. You may want to consider maintaining connections to your prior employer or look into avenues to work remotely while living overseas.

The very first question in any lawsuit is whether the court where you are filing the lawsuit has "jurisdiction" (the authority to resolve a particular legal issue). The rules for whether a court has "jurisdiction" are very complicated, and often make very little sense. Furthermore, the rules differ depending on the issue (in other words, the rules for "jurisdiction" for a divorce are different than the rules for "jurisdiction" for a custody order or a child support order, etc.) and the U.S. state or country's local laws. You or your family member's citizenship may or may not play a role in whether a particular court in a particular state or country has "jurisdiction." It is possible, in some cases, that a family may be entirely American but may have to pursue a court resolution in a foreign country. You will need to discuss this issue with an international family lawyer. "Jurisdiction" is one of the most complicated issues in family law cases, and is the top issue addressed by international lawyers.

The U.S. government has no legal authority to allow you to alter your child's custody arrangement. A U.S. passport is a document that allows you to travel across borders (sometimes in combination with other documents), but it is not permission to move your child, which should be obtained from the other parent or a court with "jurisdiction.”