Law needs chaging regarding Custody of Japanese/American children
 

U.S. lawmakers pressure Japan on child custody rights

what do you think should happen. surely both parents have a right to share their child/ren.

all too often men get penalised and cannot have access to their child that lives in Japan.


This can be a problem elsewhere also-- where marriages fall apart and the poor child is tugged between two parents-- too often living many miles apart and sometimes living in a different culture.


even here in UK--Men can get the thin edge of the wedge where custody is concerned.

what do you think Japan should or will do?

Well I think Japan should join the rest of the civilised world and become a member of the international convention on child abduction. Can't see any real valid reason not to do so.

I believe we talked about a case of a Japanese woman taking her son from her ex just last year. They do not pass much sympathy to the abductees non native parent.

I say, let the Japanese people decide what laws they want.

Okay but then they may not care if an american father loses his child? How would you feel in that sort of situation?

International Divorce - Policy hurts Japanese nationals too

some more re the family law.

I agree that Japan should stop turning a blind eye to child abduction...

On the other hand, I think the real issue is that in the case of an international divorce, the parent who doesn`t receive custody is going to be likely shut out of the child`s life. Not by laws or actions of the custodial parent, but by the difficulty of having a parent living in a different country than their child.

Countries have a strong tendency to grant custody to the native parent. This is true outside of Japan as well as in. What is best for the child in the long run is very hard to determine (impossible, really) if both the parents are normal and decent. But one side has to be chosen, so local courts favor the native over the immigrant/foreign resident/visitor. Add in language and cultural things, and the non-native is often at a severe disadvantage even if the native parent is NOT a good person for children to be with. Again, this is not a Japanese issue - it happens everywhere.

Anyway, in the case of Japan, you get far far more non-Japanese husbands with Japanese wives than the other way around... And they tend to head back to their own country after a divorce. A LOT of these divorces happen very soon after a baby comes into the picture - and taking an infant from a mother is harder than granting the father visitation and keeping the baby with the mother. The thing is, the dad usually heads back home... There is no easy way to keep up visitation if he lives in another country.

Not to mention that in any and every case I have heard of where custody was granted to the Japanese mother, when the child went to visit the father in another country... Somehow the custody agreement was annulled and custody was granted to the father in his home country if he took any interest in obtaining it. Even after years and years of no absolutely no contact. A woman who lives quite close to me took her 3 children to visit their father in the US 6 years after she`d been granted custody (and 5 years after he`d stopped providing support and contacting them at all, but 6 months after he remarried and took a sudden interest in seeing them again). And she was met at the airport by him, a lawyer, and police to remove the children from her custody. Apparently he`d convinced them that her not having enough money to fly all of them to the US every 6 months to see him was her denying him access, so she was deemed unfit. She`s now fighting to gain access to children who only knew her for most of their lives, but are now blocked from even speaking on the phone to her.

There are huge problems on both sides, really.

The difference is, if a Japanese parent lost custody to an American parent, when in America the Japanese parent would have the right to see his/her child.

This is not true in Japan. The American parent would NOT have the right to see his/her child. Even if the American had custody, and the Japanese parent essentially kidnapped the children and escaped back to Japan.

I am not talking about cases where the children were abducted. I agree that Japan needs to fix the issues there. I am talking about divorces between parents from and living in different countries in general.

These days, in a legal divorce the fathers ARE given access to their children in Japan. In fact, the courts will push to MAKE them have some level of contact with the children... But there are no real penalties for not visiting - and as I said, when one side lives in another country visitation becomes a serious issue.

I think that a lot of these kidnapping cases arise because of what I was saying in the earlier message - the native gets custody in most cases regardless of whether they`re the better choice or not. Having a lawyer on hand to legally take a child from a loving parent is no better - in my opinion - than a child being kidnapped and denied access to a loving parent. Everyone says that foreign fathers are at a disadvantage when divorcing in Japan, and unable to take their children... Try to find a Japanese mother who was granted custody in the US and allowed to leave the country to live in Japan. You won`t find many - if any - when the father has any interest in the children. There is generally a clause stating the she is only allowed to have the children live with her if she doesn`t leave the country - a close to impossibility if she doesn`t have residency that extends after the divorce, and hard even if she does but has no income and poor English skills. But even then she usually isn`t ever given primary custody - and in the case of dual custody "forfeits" her half if she lives outside of the US... But there is still the expectation that a foreign father in Japan should be able to receive custody and take the children out of Japan for residence - something that would without a doubt make it very hard for the Japanese mother to access the children.

Things like this lead me to say that there are major issues on both sides, and that it`s hard to say that Japan is all wrong and the US is all right when it comes to these custodial issues. Japan needs to deal with the abduction issues so the system isn`t abused... But the system itself is broken in countless places.

Basically I agree with everything you are saying, Nyororin.

I have a question. If a couple divorces in Japan, would the non-Japanese spouse lose the ability to live in Japan?