American parent loses out in French ruling

QI had three children from my first marriage. We’re all U.S. citizens. Then I married a French citizen, moved there with my three children, and had three more children.

English was spoken in our home. The children spoke French outside the home and while they attended French schools. All of them are able to speak, read, write and understand French and English. Occasionally, we brought all six children to Massachusetts to visit my family.

My husband moved out and sought custody of our three children, even though I’d been their primary caretaker. Because I have no support group in France and because the money I’d get in child support wouldn’t be enough to pay for rent and food there, I wanted to move the children to Massachusetts. The schools are public, and my mother has an empty house she’d let us live in rent-free.

I asked the French court to let me remove all the French-born children to Massachusetts and to grant their father Skype privileges. He’d also get them on some school vacations and all summer.

My husband claimed that if I took our children to Massachusetts, he’d never see them again. The French judge — without making any findings of fact — granted custody to my husband and denied my request to fly them to Massachusetts for summer vacations, unless I put up a substantial monetary bond. But I have no assets to do so.

So I moved with my older three children back to Massachusetts. Have you any advice?

AYours has not been and it will never be a happy situation. Each country’s system of laws is different from all other countries. That means orders issued there would be considered here to be quite unusual.

As I understand it, because French judges are not required to make findings of fact, the appellate court there only reverses when there is a violation of law. So you have no facts to support an appeal from a judgment that wants you to put up security for your promise to return the younger three children from an overseas vacation.

Don’t waste your money on an appeal. Instead, pray that when they reach age 18, they’ll want to spend more time with you. Between now and then — especially when they hit their teenage years — your then ex-husband might be willing to send them to you to get them off his back. But then, no matter how much you love them, they may be too much for you to handle.

Use your money to buy them devices on which you and your older three children can Skype. Your younger children were not kidnapped. So you can see them whenever you go to France. The more you go, the more in-person love you can give them.

Being there with them will be more valuable than whatever you might have paid lawyers.