Enforcement measures eyed to settle child custody battles

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Enforcement measures eyed to settle child custody battles

Sep. 11 06:43 am JST 18 Comments

TOKYO

An advisory panel to the Japanese Justice Ministry has proposed that measures be enforced on divorced parents who take custody of their children against a court order to pay fines.

If the parents continue to refuse to let the children go, court officials will be entitled to take away the children, the panel said in an interim report on the reform of the nation’s child custody system.

The proposal has been made at a time when critics say there is inconsistency on the state’s handling of such disputes between domestic and international marriages as the latter were already subject to rules of the so-called Hague treaty.

Japan in 2014 acceded to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which sets out rules and procedures for the prompt return to the country of habitual residence of children under 16 taken or retained by one parent, if requested by the other parent.

The Justice Ministry plans to solicit public comments on the report later this month. After reporting the outcome to the panel, the ministry is expected to submit a bill to revise the civil execution law to the Diet in 2018 at the earliest.

There is currently no stipulation in Japan’s legal system regarding parents who do not abide by a court order to give away children to their former marital partners. Such disputes have been handled based on regulations regarding the seizure of assets.

According to the proposal in the interim report, divorced parents who refuse to give away their children in defiance of a court order will be fined until their surrender to encourage them to voluntarily abide by the court decision.

If the parents continue to ignore the court order for two weeks, court officials will be allowed to take away the children and put them in the hands of the other parents.

If divorced parents fail to pay expenses to raise children, the report also proposes enabling courts to make inquiries to financial institutions on information about such parents’ financial assets.

© KYODO