I was reading an article recently about a father whose daughter was taken out of the country by his ex-wife and his efforts to have his daughter returned to him here in Florida. What was staggering to me in that article was a statistic from The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children which stated that in 2009 there were 1621 children that were wrongfully taken out of United States by a parent and of those 1621 children, only 436 were returned. I have had clients in the past that had legitimate concerns about a spouse taking their children out of the country without their permission. If a child is taken to a foreign country, it seems that there is less than a 30% chance that the child will make his/her way back to America. That is a scary statistic. Therefore, if you have a spouse who is from another country and you have legitimate fears that he/she may make an effort to remove your child from the United States, make sure that you have possession of your child's passport and don't give the other parent permission to take your child out of the country. While it is unlikely that a parent would have success getting the child out of the country without the other parent's consent, if the parent wishing to move to another country with the child is successful, the likelihood of getting the child back is very low. In many cases, its better to be safe than sorry when it comes to issues such as these.
