The High Court has ordered a 22-month-old child returned to the United States after finding that her Irish mother removed her from Kansas without the father’s consent.
Mr Justice Michael Twomey delivered judgment on 30 January 2026 in proceedings brought by the child’s American father under the Hague Convention on international child abduction.
The parents married in 2022 and their daughter was born in the United States in November 2023. The mother and child spent several months in Ireland during 2024 before returning to Kansas in September that year as part of an attempt to reconcile the marriage.
Before that return, the parents signed a Custody and Relocation Agreement stating that if reconciliation failed, the mother could relocate to Ireland with the child.
The relationship later broke down and the mother moved with the child to a separate Kansas apartment in April 2025. She nevertheless continued living and working there. The child attended a creche, had a Kansas GP and maintained regular contact with her father and paternal relatives.
On 24 September 2025, after the mother had been made redundant and her lease expired, she brought the child to Ireland without telling the father.
Twomey J found that the child was habitually resident in the United States immediately before the removal. He placed particular weight on the child’s integration into everyday life in Kansas and on the mother’s contemporaneous email saying the move had happened suddenly because of her grandmother’s illness, her redundancy and the expiry of her lease.
The court also rejected the mother’s reliance on the 2024 agreement. It held that the father’s advance consent was no longer operative 12 months later and that he had not clearly and unequivocally consented to the September 2025 removal.
The mother’s allegations about the father, which he denied, did not establish the grave-risk or intolerable-situation exception. Her expired US green card was also insufficient to prevent return.
The child was ordered returned to America, with final orders to be addressed on 3 February 2026.