Robert v. Tesson

507 F.3d 981 (2007)

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Robert v. Tesson

United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
507 F.3d 981 (2007)

  • Written by Elizabeth Yingling, JD

Facts

Ivan Robert (plaintiff) was a citizen of France when he met and married Gayle Tesson (defendant), a citizen of the United States. In 1997, Tesson gave birth to twin boys in Texas. The family lived in France at various times. The last trip to France occurred over three weeks in September and October 2003. The children had spent the prior 10 months in the United States and brought with them clothes for two seasons. The French home was unlivable. When Robert was away, Tesson returned to the United States with the children. Robert sought return of the children in a suit in Ohio federal district court under the International Child Abduction Remedies Act, alleging Tesson violated the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (Hague Convention). The Hague Convention provided that the removal of a child from one nation to another was wrongful when the removal breached a person’s custodial rights under the law of the country in which the child was habitually resident. The Hague Convention was intended to prevent a child from being taken out of the family and social environment to which he had become accustomed. The district court denied Robert’s claim, finding that the children were not habitually resident in France. The district court relied on Mozes v. Mozes, which held that the subjective intentions of the parents were dispositive. The district court ignored prior Sixth Circuit precedent in Friedrich v. Friedrich, which required a court to focus on the past experiences of the child in determining habitual residence. The Third Circuit decision in Edward M. Feder v. Melissa Ann Evans-Feder was consistent with Friedrich and held that a child’s habitual residence was the place where the child was present long enough to allow acclimatization and that had a degree of settled purpose from the child’s perspective. Robert appealed.

Rule of Law

Issue

Holding and Reasoning (Clay, J.)

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