Alone in France to sue husband, claim child

Her foreign lover secretly took her 3-month-old daughter back to Vietnam to live. After more than a year of searching, Ms. Huyen went alone to France to sue to get her child back.

According to the judgment of the Court of First Instance, with broad jurisdiction in Albi, headquartered at the Court of Justice in Albi (France), Ms. Huyen (32 years old, from Khanh Hoa) and Mr. Azais (41 years old, French nationality) had a romantic relationship. After more than a year of love, they had a child. However, when Ms. Huyen was 6 months pregnant, many conflicts arose and the two broke up.

According to Ms. Huyen, the reason was because Mr. Azais did not agree to give the child Vietnamese nationality and did not proceed with the marriage registration.

On August 14, 2014, she gave birth to a baby girl at an international hospital in Binh Duong, named Sarah. The hospital made two birth certificates for the baby in Vietnamese and English. The next day, while she was still in the hospital, Mr. Azais took the English birth certificate to the French consulate in Ho Chi Minh City to register the birth and apply for a passport for the baby. More than a week later, this agency issued a passport for the baby girl but without information about the mother.

After being discharged from the hospital, Ms. Huyen moved back to live with relatives in Vung Tau. Mr. Azais still lived in a villa in District 2 (HCMC) and visited his daughter on weekends. Two months later, for the convenience of traveling to visit his daughter, Mr. Azais rented an apartment near his house and convinced Ms. Huyen to move to HCMC. She agreed because she wanted her child to have the care of both her father and mother. Every day, Mr. Azais still came to pick up the child and take her home for a few hours before returning her to the mother.

As usual, on November 29, 2014, Mr. Azais came to pick up his child but did not return. He also stopped renting an apartment for Ms. Huyen since then. When she reported the incident to the local authorities, she learned that the father had provided documents showing that the child was French and had been registered at the French consulate, so they could not intervene.

Ms. Huyen reunited with her child after 15 months apart.

The consulate said that Sarah’s father had made a passport without the mother’s information because Huyen was not present on the day of the declaration. The case was then transferred to the Vietnamese police to handle. Mr. Azais was summoned but the police could not intervene because he and his daughter were French. There was no regulation prohibiting the father from taking his daughter.

Ms. Huyen said that at the end of that year, she returned to her hometown to get a birth certificate for her child, but the commune People's Committee refused because the child had been recognized by the French government. Declaring the child to the Vietnamese authorities required the father's consent, while Mr. Azais did not agree to this. Previously, the mother had also filed a lawsuit with the Ho Chi Minh City People's Court, but the court returned the case because it was not within its jurisdiction and there was not enough evidence to prove that she was Sarah's mother.

In early February 2015, Ms. Huyen learned from the Immigration Department that Mr. Azais and his daughter had left Vietnam. After a long period of unsuccessful attempts to contact Mr. Azais to see his daughter, the mother decided to go to France alone to file a lawsuit.

Earlier this year, the Albi Court of First Instance, with its seat at the Court of Justice in Albi, took up the case. After several hearings, on June 23, the court held a civil trial over a child custody dispute.

In court, Mr. Azais emphasized that the reason for separating the girl from her mother was because he wanted to protect her from Ms. Huyen's "worrying" behavior and interactions. "However, he mainly argued about the mother's relationship with another man even though the relationship between him and Ms. Nguyen (Ms. Huyen) had broken down and was only maintained for the sole needs of the child," the panel of judges stated.

He also claimed that he was the "target of an assassination attempt" when Ms. Huyen and many other men came to his house at 10 p.m. The court said that the evidence he provided was baseless. "Perhaps this action was taken to get back his daughter, and it could also have been done by the police after Ms. Nguyen complained many times...", the French court stated its opinion.

"By suddenly separating the girl from her mother during breastfeeding, taking her thousands of kilometers away, hiding her address from the mother, Mr. Azais seriously violated the relationship between mother and child, violated the provisions of the Civil Code and created a real psychological trauma for the child while she was still a baby," the judgment said.

The panel also found that Ms. Nguyen had demonstrated credible factors that allowed Sarah to live safely with a loving mother. Furthermore, the court found that Mr. Zais's passport showed that he lived in Vietnam at least half the time and was running a company in Vietnam. He could not prove that he would stay in France regularly to take care of his daughter himself. "To the point that the daughter was regularly raised by her grandmother."

"To ensure the interests of the child under 2 years old, it is necessary to return to Vietnam and live with the mother, so it is decided that the child's permanent residence is the place where Ms. Nguyen is registered as a permanent resident in Vietnam," the judgment stated, forcing Mr. Azais to immediately return the child and the child's passport to the mother.

The court also approved the mother's request to allow him to visit his child every Saturday from 9am to 6pm at his place of permanent residence and once a year in France, on condition that Mr. Azais pays for the travel expenses.

However, after this ruling, Mr. Azais still did not return the baby to the mother. Ms. Huyen returned home alone because her visa had expired. The Immigration Department later informed her that Mr. Azais and his daughter had entered Vietnam at the end of June. She also received a notice from Mr. Azais that he and his daughter were living in Thao Dien ward, District 2, but she still had not seen her daughter again.

On July 20, Ms. Huyen invited the Bailiff, lawyer and interpreter to the address provided by Mr. Azais to meet her daughter and ask him to execute the sentence, but the villa was guarded by security and no one opened the door.

On August 4, the District 2 People's Court, where Mr. Azais lives, issued a decision to apply temporary emergency measures, prohibiting him and his daughter from leaving the country. The mother said she is in the process of requesting the court in Ho Chi Minh City to recognize and enforce this ruling in Vietnam.

According to Vnexpress