The aftermath of a Hague case: a black hole
What happens when the parent a child is returned to, and forced to live with, dies? This is what has happened so far in my case.
My ex-husband, father of my two children, died suddenly, early in 2024. He had refused to allow me to see our children for almost 9 years, insisting that I could only visit them in the USA while knowing that I could not afford to do this (our story is detailed in this post I wrote last year).
I flew to the USA as soon as I could, knowing that my children were alone, wanting to help them cope with the traumatic death of their father and to help organise all the many things that we, as adults, know must be taken care of after the death of a close relative and to maintain a household.
They refused to see me: I was ‘terrifying’, they were afraid of me. I asked police and social services there to help me, my daughter was still a minor but was told that no help was available.
I had to return home without having seen my children. Then the father of one of my daughter’s friends started abusing and threatening me, demanding Personal Power of Attorney (PPOA) over my daughter for himself, his wife or a friend of his. I was granted an injunction against harassment in the US after his threats to have my daughter taken by social services if I did not sign the PPOA by a certain deadline.
Suddenly, social services were involved – they had been told that I was a child abductor, an abusive and neglectful mother, that I hadn’t bothered to see my children in 9 years and that I refused to provide a home for my still minor daughter. Suddenly, I was back in family court. My parental rights were cast aside. So a woman selected by the man who had harassed me was made ‘kinship carer’ (though she’d never met either my ex-husband or me) for my daughter. Nobody seemed to know where my daughter was, she was not present at any of the many hearings and, following the suggestion of this ‘kinship carer’, I was ordered to have no direct contact with her. Because she was so scared of me.
The hearings in family court came to an end when my daughter turned 18 (January 2025). I was fortunate in the lawyer who was allocated to me, he convinced the court that the charges of neglect and abuse were unfounded. However, as my children will inherit their father’s considerable estate, one of her Guardians ad Litem raised concerns that she might be manipulated or even exploited. He has applied for temporary conservatorship, so I will be back in court shortly to participate in these proceedings.
Through all this there has been but a single, one-sided point of view considered. There has been no interest in my children’s history or the background to the current case. No interest in considering my daughter’s triple nationality (which would allow her to instantly come to visit or live in the UK), her cultural, linguistic and racial heritage or the impossibility for me, a British citizen, to suddenly move to the USA to care for her.
