UK Supreme Court Decides Meaning of “Right to Custody” in Hague Convention Case (May 15, 2014) [1]
On May 15, 2014, the UK Supreme Court (the Court) held [3] in the case of In the Matter of K (A child) (Northern Ireland) that, under the terms of the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction [4] (the Convention) and the Brussels II Revised Regulation [5], K’s mother had been wrong to remove K from Lithuania because K’s grandparents enjoyed “rights of custody.” According to the press release [6], the Court held that the phrase “rights of custody” in Article 3 of the Convention should include informal, or “inchoate,” rights, “provided that the important distinction between rights of custody and rights of access was maintained.”