Court turns down Belgian’s request to have children returned

A request by the Department of Social Welfare Standards, that two children be returned to their father in Belgium after they were brought to Malta last year, has been turned down by a court on the grounds that the father had tacitly acquiesced to the children’s relocation.

In a judgment in the Family Court, Justice Robert Mangion held that the request could not be upheld as the father was aware of the mother’s intention to stay in Malta after bringing the children here. This awareness was proved by the fact that the father was looking for a job in Malta and had placed their matrimonial home in Brussels up for sale at the same time.

The case has been opened by the Social Welfare Standards Department in March after the father filed a claim with the Belgian Central Authority, under that Hague Convention, asking that his children be returned to Belgium.

The Family Court in Malta heard how the mother had come to Malta because the couple were experiencing marital problems caused by the father's sexual proclivities, which aside from adultery, included sexual activities with multiple partners conducted in the matrimonial home and his office, in the absence of his wife.

The couple, who were co-workers at an EU institution, had been discussing relocating to Malta for some time. The woman said that she had invited him to relocate to Malta in the hope that this would cut his ties with his partners. 

The mother had come to Malta in May 2014 with the two children - a boy and girl less than three years old - with the consent of her husband.

The father claimed to have expected his wife to return afterwards, but that she had failed to do so. However, the mother denied this, saying that he had been aware that no return date had been decided and that she had come to Malta to stay with her parents and to get some perspective on the issues affecting their marriage.

Signs had initially been encouraging, as whilst the woman was in Malta, he had been applying for jobs in Malta, Belgium and Sweden.

But during a visit to Malta in December the mother had found compromising photos on his Facebook page and realizing that he would not change, she filed for separation.

It its judgment, the court held that although the mother may have unlawfully retained the children when she did not return to Belgium, the father’s intensified job search activities in Malta, as well as the fact that he put their home in Belgium up for sale, demonstrated that he had acquiesced to the mother’s retention of the children.

It rejected the request by the department of social welfare, noting that case-law had long established that "once a parent acquiesces to a retention, he or she may not withdraw that acquiescence."