Posts
Jeremy D. Morley
www.international-divorce.com
The Court of Appeals of Washington
State, Division One, has issued a Commissioner’s Ruling refusing to allow
discretionary review of a lower court ruling that held – based on the expert
evidence of international family lawyer Jeremy D. Morley, as well as another
expert – that Egypt's
child custody laws violate fundamental principles of human rights.
Consequently, although Egypt
is the child's home state under the UCCJEA, the Washington court may assert
jurisdiction.
The trial court found, inter alia,
that Egyptian family courts apply specific Sharia law rules to child custody
cases, under which a Muslim mother is disqualified from custody if she does not
raise the child as a Muslim and / or if she does not comply with Muslim
religious requirements or if she remarries or moves away from the father’s
domicile. It also found that Sharia child custody law in Egypt does not
adequately take into account acts of domestic violence perpetrated by the
husband against his wife and that a husband is entitled there to use physical
force against a “disobedient” wife. Thus, there is “clear and convincing
evidence that Egyptian child custody laws violate fundamental principles of
human rights.”
For this reason the Washington court
found that the Egyptian courts had no child custody jurisdiction, even though
the parties and their son had lived in Egypt at all relevant times until the
mother, without the husband’s consent, left for the United States with the
child, and even though the husband filed a case for custody in Egypt within six
months thereafter.
The so-called “escape clause” in the UCCJEA has not been
much used thus far. A key reason for this is that there has often
been a failure to offer effective expert evidence concerning the laws and
procedures of the foreign country. The Washington case demonstrates the value
that such evidence may provide.
The
Commissioner cited with approval a decision by the Louisiana Supreme Court
under the UCCJEA's predecessor, the UCCJA, which had affirmed the trial court's
conclusion that declined to recognize Egypt as a "state" "for
purposes of determining jurisdiction
based on the fundamental differences between Egypt's child custody laws and
Louisiana's child custody laws."
