If you brought your child to the U.S. and someone is now trying to force them back to another country, most of the advice online isn’t written for you. This is.
Key Takeaways:
- If your child came to the U.S. with you, you have real, legal ways to stop a court from automatically sending them back.
- The strongest defense is proving your child isn’t safe there, a claim made easier to win by a 2022 Supreme Court ruling.
- Winning keeps your case in U.S. courts, where custody gets decided next.
If someone is trying to use the Hague Convention to send your child back to another country, and you’re the one who brought them here, you’re probably finding that most articles online are written for the other parent, the one trying to get a child back. That’s not your situation.
You’re being sued, and you need to know what you can do about it. Here’s the short version: you have real defenses. Courts don’t just rubber-stamp these requests.
But you need to move fast. These cases move through court faster than almost any other kind of family law case, and building your case the right way from the start matters.
If you’re already facing one of these cases, contact The Manely Firm, P.C. today to request your free Case Evaluation. The sooner you talk to someone who’s handled these cases, the better your options.
First, What Is the Other Parent Actually Asking the Court to Do?
The petition asks the court to send your child back to whatever country they lived in before. That country’s courts then decide custody.
That distinction matters more than it sounds:
If you win, the custody decision gets made here in the U.S., not somewhere else.
If you lose, the case moves to that other country’s courts. It doesn’t mean you lose your child permanently.
The Defenses You Can Raise
The law gives you a few different ways to stop a return order. Here they are in plain terms:
- It isn’t safe there. This is called the “grave risk” defense, and it’s the one most people end up using. You have to show the court, with strong evidence, that sending your child back would put them in real danger.
- Your child has already settled in here. If more than a year has passed and your child has built a real life here, a court can decide not to send them back even without proving danger.
- The other parent already agreed to this, or went along with it. If they consented to the move at the time, or accepted it afterward, that can defeat the case.
- Your child is old enough to have a say. Older children can tell the court they don’t want to go back, and judges do listen.
Of everything on this list, the safety argument is both the most common and the one courts scrutinize the hardest.
How Long Does This Take?
The Hague Convention itself sets an informal six-week target for a first decision. Courts are directed to use “the most expeditious procedures available.”
Real cases often take longer, especially once grave risk evidence has to be developed and tested. Some stretch to many months, and a small number end up back in court on appeal.
That gap between the target and reality is exactly why early preparation matters so much. A case built on evidence gathered under pressure, days before a hearing, rarely holds up as well as one built deliberately from the start.
Making the “It Isn’t Safe” Argument Work
Saying it isn’t safe isn’t enough. You have to prove it, and the standard is high. Courts want to see real documentation, not your account of what happened, including:
- Police reports
- Medical records
- Prior court orders
- Anything that shows a pattern of danger, not a single bad moment
Start collecting this before your first hearing, not after. These cases move on a fast clock. By the time you’re standing in front of a judge, the evidence needs to already be organized and ready.
A 2022 Supreme Court Case That Works in Your Favor
In 2022, the Supreme Court decided a case called Golan v. Saada that changed how these safety arguments play out.
Before that ruling, some courts made parents go through an extra round of arguing about whether some “fix,” like a promise from the other parent, could make it okay to send the child back anyway, even after danger was already proven.
The Supreme Court said no. If a court finds real danger, it can simply deny the return right there, without weighing every possible workaround the other side proposes.
That’s good news if you build a strong case. A well-documented showing of danger can end things without a drawn-out second round over “fixes” that would let the other parent win anyway.
The law behind these cases gives courts real discretion in these situations.
Why It Matters Who’s Handling Your Case
These cases need attorneys who’ve stood in federal court arguing this exact area of law, not ones encountering it for the first time. Here’s what that looks like at our firm:
- A Supreme Court track record. Founding attorney Michael E. Manely is the only all-family-law attorney in the country to win a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision in an international custody case, Chafin v. Chafin.
- 35 years of family law experience, handling everything from routine custody disputes to complex international cases.
- A team that works in more than ten languages, built for cases that cross borders as often as they cross courtrooms.
Our family law attorneys understand both sides of Hague Convention cases, including the side most firms rarely see.
What Happens If the Defense Succeeds
If a court denies the return request, the case doesn’t end there. It moves into an ordinary child custody proceeding here in the U.S., where a court decides parenting time and decision-making the normal way.
Defeating a return request opens a new phase of the case: an ordinary custody proceeding, and that phase needs its own plan.
If This Is Happening to You Right Now
Time matters. The parent seeking return is moving quickly, and you need to move at least as fast. Waiting to gather evidence or talk to an attorney only makes your case weaker.
Contact The Manely Firm, P.C. today to request your free Case Evaluation and find out exactly what defending your case will take.
