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The parents met in 2015 when the father was serving in the US Air Force in Germany. They married in March 2016 and had their first child later that year. They moved to the US in 2017 and back to Germany in December 2018. They had a second child in 2020. The children were dual USA and German citizens. The parents separated in September 2021 and the father moved back to the United States. The children remained with the mother in Germany. As the parents were married, they had joint custody under German law. Before the father moved back to the United States, the parents applied to the German court for an order giving the mother the delegated right to determine the children's residence. 

In 2024 the father suggested that the mother move to the United States with the children and that he would sponsor her F-1 visa. With this visa the mother would be a student and have limited work opportunities. The father agreed to provide her with financial support and agreed that, if her visa was not granted, the children would return to Germany with her. 

The children traveled to the United States in August 2024 so that they could begin school that year and the mother followed in October. Soon after the mother's arrival, the father changed the terms of his financial support. In February 2025 the mother told the father that she wanted to return to Germany with the children but the father refused to return their passports.

The mother filed an application under the 1980 Hague Abduction Convention for the return of the children to Germany.  She argued that the wrongful retention began in February 2025. The father argued that there was no wrongful retention.

Return ordered. 

Removal and Retention - Arts 3 and 12

The court held that the father wrongfully retained the children when he refused to return their passports. The mother had custody of the children under the German court order and the father wrongfully withheld them with the express intent to prevent her from exercising her custodial rights and returning to Germany.

Habitual Residence - Art. 3

By February 2025, the children had only been in the USA for six months and the mother for about six weeks. The parents had agreed that if the mother's visa had been denied, the children would have returned to Germany, so the period prior to the mother arriving in the USA was explicitly transitory.

The children had spent the majority of their lives in Germany and had extended family and friends there. Due to their young age (8 and 4 in February 2025), their parents’ intentions were relevant and the fact showed that the move to the USA was not a decision to settle indefinitely.