Naturally, the ruling from the District Court or the Court of Appeals of The Hague must be complied with. If the judge has decided that the child needs to return to the country it came from, the parent who took the child has to let the child return. The parent can either return with the child or stay behind. Effective agreements are important, so as to make the return as positive as possible for the child. The parents, with their lawyers, can make agreements together, but parents can also do that within a cross border mediation. Within cross border mediation other agreements can be reached too about the return, such as housing for the parent who returns with the child or contact/access between the parent with whom the child will live and the other parent.
In the large majority of cases the parent who kept the child cooperates with the return of the child to the country it came from. In exceptional cases the abducting parent does not cooperate to the child being returned. In that case mandatory enforcement of the order to return is at stake. In such cases, the police and judiciary are called upon to effect the return. As it can be traumatizing for a child to be faced with the police out of the blue, a cooperation agreement has been drafted.
The starting-point of the said agreement is that the lawyers first try to bring about a return in consultation. Only if this fails the lawyer contacts the Public Prosecutor. In principle the contact with the Public Prosecutor only happens through your lawyer. Therefore, you need a lawyer for this as well, the lawyers from DIAL can provide you with assistance. The Public Prosecutor is bound to the ruling from the judge and shall have to enforce this in principle. To be able to do so, the Public Prosecutor will contact the police to find out where the child is staying. The Public Prosecutor will also contact the Child Protection Board to discuss how the return can be arranged in the best possible manner, i.e. with as little impact on the child as possible. In principle, in the case of a mandatory transfer of a child, an employee of the Child Protection Board is always present and things are organized in such a way that the child is able to say goodbye to the abducting parent.
