Child Abduction in Costa Rica

Child abduction is a topic that is so very serious and that occurs almost on a daily basis, in many countries in the world. However, there are so many cases of children being abducted and being transported into Costa Rica that the number appears to have grown to over one thousand children. Many US custody cases gone wrong have resulted in the non-custodial parent taking off with the child and running to Costa Rica to hide. Why pick Costa Rica? Well, this country does not recognize interstate custody agreements and will not work with other countries in an effort to get the child returned to the custodial parents. Furthermore many Costa Rican officials do not believe it is the correct course of action to interfere with any child abduction case.

In some cases of child abduction, the non-custodial parent who has taken off with the child has entered the country and complained that they have been an abused spouse or have detailed some other fictitious tale that will lead officials not to engage in any activity to try and get to the truth. Costa Rica was not an original signatory country to the Hague International Child Abduction Convention. This Convention lays down requires of countries to cooperate and collaborate with one another to return a child to its rightful parent in the case he or she has been abducted. A great deal of these countries that already signed The Hague assists in the recovery of abducted children to return them to their parents who have signed custody agreements with other countries.

However, Costa Rica was not a country that was an original signer. Thecountry signed much later as what is termed an acceding state. An acceding state designation means that Costa Rica will only cooperate with countries that have signed a special agreement with them. The United States signed with Costa Rica and any and all cases from January 1, 2008 on are eligible to be handled with the collaboration between those two countries. However, with all of this in place, there has been a great lack of cooperation with Costa Rican officials to get them to begin an investigation into any of the hundreds, some say thousands of child abduction cases rumored to be in that country.

What are parents to do when one of their children has been abducted and taken into Costa Rica, when that country is considered non cooperative? One of the more controversial choices is to hire a company that has become specialized in recovering abducted children, however this may not be the right choice, due to expenses and a lack of understanding about international law. A far better choice is to hire an attorney who specializes in child custody laws in Costa Rica. A good law firm can assist those parents who are residing in other countries, acting as their liaison within the Costa Rican court system. It is a great first step toward understanding how the process operates and toward the possible return of your abducted child.