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[ErinC]

Utah children taken by family member to Croatia coming home

The family of four Utah children who were found in a Croatian home after they were reported missing last month says the children are on their way home.

www.fox13now.com

Four Utah children who were taken out of the country last month by their mother and later found in a Croatian home are headed back to the U.S.
"WE ARE TAKING THE KIDS HOME," the family wrote in an update on GoFundMe.
The family shared that Croatian police had finished their investigation and police returned the children's passports.
More at link

I had hoped for this. I know the Croatians wanted the best for them, but I can't, ultimately, see the government budgeters wanting to pay for four more wards of the state if they had an out. I am relieved authorities let the fourth child go with the family as I was a little worried about him not having a (non-insane) parent in country. MOO

 

[Rikissa]

I had hoped for this. I know the Croatians wanted the best for them, but I can't, ultimately, see the government budgeters wanting to pay for four more wards of the state if they had an out. I am relieved authorities let the fourth child go with the family as I was a little worried about him not having a (non-insane) parent in country. MOO

According to post #22 the children's relatives came to Croatia on 17 January, so it has taken the Croatian authorities 14 days to established that the family members that arrived are who they claim to be, and that the fathers have shared custody of the children from a court in the US, and to have all the paperwork translated from English to Croatian. Two weeks is not a long time for all of this to be done. As for the fourth child, I do hope he is taken back to his father and family, and that there were paperwork showing that his half-siblings family had the legal right to take him back to the US.

How long time would it take in the US courts to handle a similar matter? I hope the situation today is better than it was in 2005, when a child from Chile was abducted by a parent to the US, the case hadn't been solved in 2009. It seemed as the courts in the US were just waiting for the child to be 16, and to be able to stay with the American parent who had abducted them. Not respecting the judgement of other countries' legal systems.

U.S. Hypocrisy Concerning International Child Abduction - International Divorce

This article appears in the International Bar Association's September 2010 newsletter

international-divorce.com