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There are some cases where someone can violate a custody agreement in such a way that the courts have very little chance of reversing matters. In particular, people often get away with kidnapping their own children to a different country that either holds a different view of who ought to have custody or refuses to extradite as a general principle. In fact, this even happens between US states (I know of some cases where California has refused to uphold Texas custody agreements related to trans healthcare for the kids for example).
In that kind of circumstance, and if the ex is horrifically abusing the child, it may in fact be reasonable to pull the trigger on violating the order. Your argument is that people don’t get away with kidnapping, so they shouldn’t do it even in extreme outlier cases, but people do in fact get away with kidnapping pretty commonly when borders get in the way.
Sure. Some people get away with getting into a shootout with the police. But very few do, and the kind of people that think they will win in a shootout with the cops are the last people that you should encourage to do so.
The stories of people that successfully jump the border with their kids are like man bites dog.
I’ve seen it come up with enough regularity on personal drama subs that I think it is not actually that uncommon. Why are you so confident that it is?
Getting into a gunfight with police and traveling across a border with your own child are two wildly different things. The state has a very strong interest in dropping the hammer over the first because not doing so would be giving up it’s monopoly on force.
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It's pretty trivial in some cases, depending on the citizenship of the parent. Japan is notorious for example, there have been hundreds of cases where a parent takes their child to Japan in violation of a custody agreement, and then just refuse to go back. Japanese courts do not take into consideration foreign custody agreements, and strongly favor Japanese parents.
https://web.archive.org/web/20101122071433/http://tokyo.usembassy.gov/e/p/tp-20100122-85.html
Do you think those cases are even remotely representative?
Granted they exist, they are the exception that proves the rule applies to the rest of cases.
How many Japanese nationals are there who get involved in a custody dispute in a foreign country? A surprising number of people avail themselves of the option when it is available to them. Japan is just the most notorious example, plenty of countries will drag out an international custody dispute for years until the issue is effectively moot. Once a child is 12 or so years old, it becomes very hard to force them to live with an estranged parent they have not seen in years, who lives in a foreign country.
I get your overall point though, most people who disobey custody orders are not exactly masterminds, and likely don't have a foreign abscondment planned.
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