CHILD ABDUCTION, THE U.S., AND POLAND
What do travel and divorce have in common? The tragic answer sometimes is: child abduction. Modern means of transportation has brought the world closer: you can have breakfast in Warsaw and dinner in New York. The airplane and more than a century of immigration between the United States and Poland means there are lots of dual national marriages. Unfortunately, the rise in the divorce rate affects them, too.
Child abduction occurs when one parent takes a child to another country and keeps that child there contrary to the wish of the other parent. If both parents have and exercise parental rights, one cannot unilaterally remove the child to another country without the other’s consent. A typical scenario is for a parent to take the child to Poland “on vacation” and then to inform the other parent that he or she has no intention of going back to the United States with the child.
Child abductors sometimes hope to pursue a divorce in their home countries and get custody there. They think—sometimes justifiably—that they have a “home court” advantage by bringing their cases there.
In order to stamp out child abduction and deter the kind of “court-shopping” that accompanies it, many countries—including the Unites States and Poland—signed the Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. The 1980 Hague Convention stipulates that any decision about child custody must be made in the place where the child is “habitually resident.” A taking parent, therefore, cannot use that fait accompli in order to obtain child custody somewhere other than where that child normally lives.
If you are a left-behind parent, what can you do? Efforts to recover abducted children are conducted through what the Hague Convention calls a country’s “Central Authority.” The U.S. Central Authority is the Office of Children’s Issues in the State Department; the Polish Central Authority is the Department of International Cooperation in the Ministry of Justice. If your child has been abducted and you are in Poland, you should immediately contact the Polish Central Authority, Departament Wspólpracy Międzynarodowej i Prawa Europejskiego, Al. Ujazdowskie 11, 00-950 Warsaw. The telephone number is (22) 628-0949. If you are in the United States, immediately call the Office of Children’s Issues, U.S. State Department, 2201 C Street NW, SA-29, 4th Floor, Washington, DC 20520-2818. Their telephone number is (202) 736-9090, fax: (202) 736-9133. In either event, please also call the American Citizen Services Unit at the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw or the U.S. Consulate General in Krakow as soon as possible.
A primary reason for the U.S. requirement (also mirrored in Polish regulations) that both parents consent to issuance of a passport to a minor child is precisely to deter international child abduction. While it sometimes may be a burden for both parents to appear before a consular official to apply for a passport or to execute a consent document for such issuance, the U.S. has consciously decided that the scourge of international child abduction far outweighs this inconvenience. If you fear that your child may be abducted over international borders, immediately contact the Office of Children’s Issues and inform appropriate law enforcement officials. Information regarding the issuance of a passport to a minor is available to either parent, regardless of custody rights, as long as the requesting parent’s rights have not been terminated.
The Department of State’s Passport Namecheck Clearance System is a system to alert you when an application for a U.S. passport is made for your child. In order for our office to notify an objecting parent, our office will need to have in our files the parent’s request and a copy of a document such as a birth certificate or court order of guardianship that shows the relationship between the child and the objecting parent. This is not a system for tracking the use of a passport. Once a passport is issued, its use is not tracked or controlled by the Department of State. There are no exit controls yet for American citizens leaving the United States. This system can be used to inform a parent or a court when an application for a U.S. passport is executed on behalf of a child. The alert system generally remains in effect until each child turns 18. It is very important that parents keep us informed in writing of any changes to contact information and legal representation. Failure to notify the office of a current address may result in a passport issuance for your child without your consent.
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