Souratgar v. Fair

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The district court granted petitioner's request for the return of his son, the son whose custody he and respondent shared in Singapore, and the court affirmed. In this appeal, petitioner seeks an order directing respondent to pay the necessary expenses related to his successful petition under the International Child Abduction Remedies Act (ICARA), 22 U.S.C. 9007(b)(3). The district court ordered respondent to pay petitioner $283,066.62. The court concluded that the record demonstrated that petitioner committed intimate partner violence against respondent and respondent did not commit any violence against petitioner. Although the district court was correct in considering this unilateral intimate partner violence as a relevant equitable factor, the district court erred in its assessment of the relationship between the intimate partner violence and respondent's decision to remove the child from the country of habitual residence and thus erred in its weighing of the equitable factors. Because respondent established that petitioner had committed multiple, unilateral acts of intimate partner violence against her, and that her removal of the child from the habitual country was related to that violence, an award of expenses to petitioner, given the absence of countervailing equitable factors, is clearly inappropriate. Accordingly, the court reversed and vacated. View "Souratgar v. Fair" on Justia Law