Costa Rica, Child Custody and Abduction Laws

Costa Rica has no treaties with other countries for child abduction when a parent has legal custody.

Last week another U.S. father was in Costa Rica seeking a son for whom he had legal custody of.  Unfortunately, the father so far has struck out, forcing him to hired a private investigator.

This is just another case of a U.S. parent running out on a divorce decision and abducting their child. The case originated over a year ago in Boise, Idaho and the mother is believed to have fled to Costa Rica with the child. It is believed that hundreds (some say 1000s) of abducted children reside in Costa Rica.

The problem any parent faces is Costa Rica’s does not abide by interstate enforcement of custody and visitation orders. In other  words, the right off the bat any parent had three strikes against them, first strike is the U.S. Embassy in San Jose, but like many countries, embassy personnel take a back seat and fail to act on information about abducted children when a parent tries to seek their help.

The second strike, Óscar Arias Sánchez administration has ignored and will not enforce any international child abduction treaties obligations and the third strike, Costa Rica is well known to, and accepts refugee applications from those mothers/fathers fleeing U.S. justice. So all a parent has to do is claim some sort of legal problem with the US and they can enter.

Another  problem is that Costa Rican officials are quick to believe lies/tales of spousal abuse and seldom try to get full information by contacting investigators or judges in the United States.

While interstate enforcement of custody and visitation orders, may prove difficult, international enforcement compounds those difficulties. Absent in Costa Rica is a Child Abduction Treaty, where an order issued by, lets say, a United States court, may be enforced and one that does not run into road blocks based on the foreign country’s own law or on principles of comity (legal reciprocity). The treaty used by the United States and a growing number of other countries is the Hague International Child Abduction Convention.

The purpose of the Hague Convention is to secure prompt return of children wrongfully removed from or retained in any nation party to the treaty (contracting state), and to ensure that custody and visitation (access) rights are effectively respected in other contracting states. The Hague convention may not be used to establish or to relitigate custody. The convention applies to children under the age of sixteen and provides both substantive and procedural rules pertaining to enforcement of custody rights.

The Hague Convention may only be used and enforced where there is an existing court order for custody like the one parent has. However, its procedures may be used to regain custody where a child was taken prior to the time a court issued the custody order.

The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction [known as the Hague Convention]  is the main international treaty that can assist parents whose children have been abducted to another country. As of August 2007, approximately 80 countries have adopted the Convention and Costa Rica is not one of them.  It offers considerable assistance in the case of children abducted to signatory countries, and just in Canada alone, over 400 Canadian children have been returned under its arrangements.

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