Custody case: travel ban on children

WELLINGTON: A mother who has been granted 50/50 care of her children with the New Zealand father is not allowed to leave New Zealand with them until 2023.

The ‘‘unusual condition’’ in the family court ruling comes after a twoyear heated battle between the mother and New Zealand father over their custody of their young children resulting in the mother being trespassed and being charged with abduction of their children when she took them to the hospital to be checked over.

Neither parents can be named to protect the privacy of the children.

The mother originally brought the children to New Zealand to stay with their father so she could go on holiday for a month.

When the father could not do it, she arranged for an acquaintance to care for them.

While she was away the father applied for a parental order which gave him majority care of the children.

In his judgement last month, Judge Adams said the mother’s dismay at the parenting order — done without her knowledge — and getting into heated disputes that ‘‘misfired badly’’ had resulted in police interventions, criminal proceedings that were not upheld and reduced and supervised contact of her children.

She was also trespassed from the children’s school.

Her ‘‘hyper vigilance’’ over concerns over the father’s parenting also resulted in her calling Oranga Tamariki 40 times over two years — the highest number of callouts a social worker told the court she had ever seen to one family, according to the judgement.

The father’s ‘‘overanxious reactions’’ to the mother’s ‘‘impulsive behaviour’’ resulted in her only being allowed limited and supervised contact with her children, the decision says.

Judge Adams acknowledged the court system failed to set this case to better rights at an early stage when it came to light that the earlier parenting order had been made without taking into account a more ‘‘balanced history’’.

This included that they had previously worked together well and that the father had previously been unconcerned over the mother’s parenting.

He said because the issues were not addressed quickly they had been overtaken by the mother’s extreme views and impulsive behaviour exacerbated by her parental disempowerment and the father’s histrionic tendencies.

He noted both parents had overreacted to events.

But despite the parents’ behaviour, he deemed both to be ‘‘safeenough’’ parents who individually had much to offer and that the children were happy and healthy who ‘‘miraculously’’ seem unaffected by the upheavals that had tormented both parents.

Judge Adams dismissed previous parenting orders which had led to the mother only seeing her children under supervision in an effort to ‘‘wipe the slate clean’’ and awarded them split guardianship.

He also apologised to the mother for her painful experiences of justice in New Zealand.

‘‘Now it is apparent, I think what happened to [mother] has been unfair and unfairly prolonged,’’ the judgement said.

The judge also chose not to pursue the father’s alleged breaches of the earlier parenting order so they could have a ‘‘new beginning’’.

In setting out the new shared parenting orders, he gave strict instructions on how and when the parents were allowed to communicate with each other and ordered they attend couple counselling.

The parents would care for the children on alternate weeks and the children were not allowed to leave the country until 2023.

While restricting the children from leaving New Zealand for more than two years was ‘‘unusual’’, he felt it was necessary so the parents could develop good coparenting communication rather than risk the mother taking the children overseas and not returning them.

However, the mother told The New Zealand Herald she had no faith in the court system.

She now planned to appeal against the court’s decision not to allow her to take her children back to their birth country and her support network claiming they were being detained here against their wishes.

The father declined to comment.