now kenny goes out there in the snow while we wait here and drink hot chocolate . while he is out there he can see us through this windowThat ' s . Southpark , right ? Something about Cartman ' s dad ? <| sep |> You can make a claim that an incorrect relocation of a child has occurred and invoke The Hague Treaty for a period of time but after a year , the precedent is that if you haven ' t tried to assert that the child should be returned that 1 . You ' ve effectively accepted that the child was allowed to be relocated abroad and or 2 . that the child at that point has a new residence in the new country . The principal foundation of The Hague Treaty is that it compels signatories to return children to their country of residence because doing so is in the children ' s best interest , nothing more or less . By not acting within a year , you risk having it be decided that the child is now a resident in the new county and that relocating them back , away from the place they are accustomed to , wouldn ' t be in the child ' s interest . I ' m not an attorney . This is what I concluded from my research . And it ' s why I acted as quickly as possible when my children were kept in a foreign country by my ex for longer than the few weeks we had agreed to . The law and courts are not really about what ' s right or fair . It ' s just about what the law is or isn ' t .