Bitter custody battles for children following a divorce by parents of different citizenships periodically provide heart-wrenching headlines when one parent kidnaps the children and goes to another country. The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which stipulates that children should be returned their regular residence if illegally taken from it, gives parents grounds for petitioning the courts in their home country to recover abducted children.
But these long and complex legal proceedings can last for months, and even years, creating hardships for the parties involved. And the subject of the case can get lost in the battle: the children, whose voices are not always heard.
Center for International Child Custody and Relocation (CICCAR) was recently founded in Israel to prevent such children from falling between the cracks. CICCAR founder and executive director Andrew Zashin is co-managing partner of Zashin & Rich Co. LPA in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, and an expert in child custody and relocation cases. He arrived in Israel last month to set up the organization.
"Globes": Why set up CICCAR in Israel?
Zashin: "The answer is location. Many of the world's cities are more important for commerce, industry, or politics, in the East and West, are closer to Tel Aviv than the 2,451 miles between New York and Los Angeles. London is 2,221 miles from Tel Aviv, with the rest of Europe between them. Moscow is 1,643 miles northeast of Tel Aviv, and New Delhi is 2,528 miles to the east. Many developing countries and signatories of the Hague Convention are only a short flight from Tel Aviv."
A personal experience brought Zashin, a Zionist American Jew, to Israel. "A few years ago, during the second intifada, my wife and I went out for an evening with another couple. We passed a bookstore where I saw an article about a custody case involving a child, in which an American woman who immigrated to Israel illegally took the child from its father and smuggled him from Israel to the US."
Zashin read that the woman opened divorce proceedings in the US and asked for custody of the boy, in violation of the Hague Convention. The boy's regular residence was Israel, but the US court ruled that the boy's case was an exception to the convention's provisions of relocation because returning him to Israel put him in an "intolerable position" and exposed him to "the risk of material harm" because Israel was a war zone. The father in Israel used up nearly all his resources in an effort to persuade the US court to return the boy to Israel. At one point, he said that if he lost the appeal, he would quit because he lacked the means to continue the case.
Zashin said, "After I read this, I made contact with his lawyer in Israel and offered the services of my firm to petition the US Supreme Court if the father lost the case. Luckily, the appeals court ruled that he child was illegally taken and that he should be returned to Israel.
Do you plan to immigrate to Israel?
"My family is currently in Israel and my children go to school here, but I have no plans to abandon my practice in the US. My firm operates out of Chicago, and it is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, with another office in the state capital Columbus. My firm's family law practice is growing nationwide, and I am constantly travelling between Israel and the US. I can provide clients with full legal services that are not patchwork. Besides, when I'm travelling, my colleagues cover any problem for me, and in an emergency, I can return to the US within 24 hours."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 21, 2009
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