Globalization may be making the world smaller, but it’s making family law more complicated. It is also turning Seattle into a high-growth area for international divorce and custody cases.
David Starks, who practices family law with Seattle’s McKinley Irvin, says half his cases span national borders. Recently, he represented a U.S. citizen who separated from her German husband and brought their 2-year-old daughter from Germany to Spokane, where she had landed a teaching job.
The husband tried to get his daughter returned to Germany by enlisting the help of the German government, which contacted the U.S. State Department. It asked Starks’ client to voluntarily return to Germany and resolve custody issues under that nation’s law. She said no.
The husband sought help from a German court; without notifying his wife, it ruled she’d wrongfully taken the little girl to the U.S. Her husband also filed a petition in federal court in Spokane under the Hague Convention, which spells out rules on returning children taken across international borders. Last year, the court ruled against him for a variety of reasons, including his failure to timely file the petition.
Much of Starks’ time is spent dealing with these tricky cases. “I don’t know if, five years ago, I could have focused my practice on these matters,” he says. Fueling the change is the Washington economy. “We’ve seen an increase [in global cases] since Microsoft and other high-tech companies brought in more foreign workers,” says Mark Gouras with Kent’s Gouras & Amis.
Often, a parent who hails from another country but works in Washington claims the other parent has abducted a child across a border, or is likely to do so. Typically, these clients have never heard of the Hague Convention. “Most have never given it any thought,” says Seattle family lawyer Marguerite (Maggie) Smith with Smith Family Law, who is a vice chair of the American Bar Association’s International Family Law Committee.
Under this multilateral treaty, a “left-behind” parent can seek limited assistance from a treaty country’s designated central authority. And because of the treaty, a left-behind parent whose child has been brought to the United States can file a Petition for Return in a state or federal court.
However, when children are taken to a non-treaty country, getting them returned can become impossible. “Japan has never returned a child,” says Gouras. Starks adds that Iran is one of the worst countries for getting any family law order enforced.
Though international family law cases frequently begin with child custody concerns, they can involve the full range of family law issues, including divorce, maintenance and asset distribution. There’s no typical case, and no one foreign nation predominates. Washington lawyers handle cases involving citizens of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Canada, Israel and China. The list goes on. “The vast majority of my international family law cases are from Europe,” says Smith.
The outcomes can vary significantly, depending on which countries have jurisdiction over the legal issues. Recently, a man who works in Washington but is a citizen of India contacted Starks. The man’s wife had been unfaithful, and he wanted advice on where to file for divorce: Washington or India. “If he gets the divorce in India, because she’s at fault [under Indian law], she may get nothing; that’s not true here,” says Starks. But there’s another consideration: It can take up to seven years to obtain a divorce in India.
Smith warns that not all family lawyers are familiar with how a case might be affected by another country’s laws. For example, England doesn’t consider prenuptial agreements enforceable contracts; an English court may consider their provisions but isn’t bound by them. And English courts are more likely to divide separate property, while Washington courts are more inclined to take a hands-off approach.
The trickiest international family law cases involve three or more jurisdictions. An illustration: A Russian citizen who works in Washington wants to divorce her husband, an Israeli citizen living in Israel. The couple own a house in Italy and have bank accounts in Canada and France. This case won’t be just complex; it will be expensive, because a Washington lawyer representing the wife probably will need to hire lawyers in three foreign lands: “boots on the ground,” as Starks calls them.
Rita Bender, with Skellenger Bender, says one of the most important services a family law attorney can offer is finding the right foreign lawyers to consult or work with: “You need to build a robust Rolodex.”
Given the continual flow of foreign workers to Washington’s high-tech businesses, count on more and more of them to say their marital goodbyes—or adieus or sayonaras—in Seattle. L&P
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