Q. My ex and I have a three year old daughter but were never married. We had been living in Greece for the last year, but in August he came home drunk and beat me up. My neighbors called the police who arrested him. He broke my jaw and I needed several stitches. After being cleared to fly, I took our daughter and got on the next plane home to my parents.
I was just served with a petition to return our daughter to Greece citing international kidnapping. I’m told if I testify by Zoom he will spend at least a year in jail if not more. How can he get our daughter back if he is in jail? Also, my daughter and I are US citizens, and he is a refugee living in Greece – not a citizen. I do not have the money to hire a lawyer. What is my best argument when I go to court?
A. First, you should reach out to the US State Department to see if they have any referral sources for you. They connect the left-behind parents with an Attorney Network. There may be some circumstances in which they could refer you to a pro-bono lawyer. If not, you can also try the various Massachusetts legal services offices who sometimes handle these matters including Harvard Law Clinic.
You should file a Motion to Dismiss the petition for failure to state a claim on which relief can be granted. It is best if you can find a lawyer to draft it – even on a limited basis. You will need to argue that under Greek law, the mother has custody of children when the child is born out of wedlock so your ex cannot meet the standard for return because he does not have custodial rights.
You also need to file an answer to the petition again citing that he does not have custody under Greek law so the petition should be dismissed. You need to also state that returning your daughter to Greece would be a grave risk of harm to her and place her in an intolerable situation given that her father is in jail for domestic violence. The court cannot order you to return, only your daughter. If he is in jail, she cannot go live with him in jail so a return order would leave her in limbo.
Finally, you should look into whether his serving time in jail would subject him to deportation from Greece to wherever he is a refugee from. If so, add that fact to your motion to dismiss and your answer to the petition as an additional reason to decline the return.
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