Bellevue Legal News: Seattle Divorce & Domestic Violence Lawyer

Facing Pressure, Japan Will Join International Child Custody Pact

After years of mounting pressure from other countries, Japan has agreed to revise some of their current international child custody policies and join the international child custody pact, created at the 1980 Hague Convention on international abduction. Japan is the last of the Group of Seven nations to sign the pact.

In recent years, Japan has been under fire for harboring Japanese women and their children without being fair to their foreign fathers – their actions reflect their national child custody laws, in which only one parent receives custody of the children and in which mothers are nearly always granted custody.

The United States State Department and the US Embassy in Tokyo says that there are an estimated one hundred and thirty active cases involving children with American fathers who have been taken by their mothers to Japan. While many hope that this new pact signing will allow these fathers greater visitation rights, some worry that not much will change in the future.

Japan’s role in sheltering Japanese parents who fled America with their children during child custody disputes was put in the spotlight in 2009 after a US father, Christopher Savoie, was arrested in Japan for “abducting” his children in Japan as they walked to school. His ex-wife, Japanese citizen Noriko Savoie, had violated US court orders and taken her children to Japan years before.

The move to join the pact was made by Japan’s Cabinet and supported by Prime Minister Naoto Kan.

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