American father arrested in Japan had asked Tennessee court for help

Friday 02nd October, 06:41 AM JST

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Cicada at 05:49 PM JST - 8th October

amerijap:

That's the sort of grievance strategy this woman is using to build the solidarity from her sympathizers. I agree that's quite justifiable and rational tactic. No doubt about it.

Indeed, I agree it is quite a "strategy" for Noriko to show kindness, dignity, patience and graciousness as opposed to the attitudes of arrogance, hostility, contempt and disrespect shown by Chris and Amy.
JoeBigs at 07:53 PM JST - 8th October

However, educational and cultural concerns are determining and predictable factors

If these are the only factors to talk about then the women wins hands down. American education is by far so back woods that the children would be better suited learning in Japan. But are those the only factors?

you just can't fight a court battle without knowing the legal system that differs from Japan.

So her husband, hoodwinks her into coming to his home ground, then divorces her. Then tries to make her fight in his home ground. But in this case it did not work out, he made a mistake and she took off......

they should have discussed and settled while they were still in Japan

Very good point, but....hmmmm....but.... why did he take his family to Tenn and then after she arrives, he files for divorce???

Kind of an odd move for a loving husband.....Oh but wait, months after he files, he gets remarried! Sniff sniff, this smells like a setup........LOL

you just can't fight a court battle without knowing the legal system that differs from Japan.

Correct, why fight a battle in someone else's court? Hell, she did the right thing, she made him try to fight in her court......guess he lost!!!

Now instead of being a good Dad he is soon to be a convict.....

This just goes to show you, you mess around on your wife/husband and that snake will bite you real bad....LOL

This sap is paying for his bs in spades......LOL

Hope he gets more and more and more for his attempt.......Make him pay for trying to play with his kids....A man would have owned up and thought of his kids rather of himself.

If he really loved his kids he would have moved his mistress to Japan and been a there for them. But no, he wanted to play and not pay....

He is a sad father.....
techall at 08:29 PM JST - 8th October

She knew she was going to the States to negotiate a divorce settlement, There was no deception there. She negotiated an 800,000USD settlement on condition she did not take the children out of the U.S., then she renegs on the settlement. She got permisiion to take the kids to Japan on vacation and got their passports which were being held by the court. When she returned from "vacation" she did not return the passports as required and fled with the children..abduction. There is a felony warrant out for her arrest in the state of Tennessee and because she left Tennessee the FBI would arrest her if she was caught anywhere in the U.S or it's territories. I hope she tries to take them to Guam or Saipan on the next vacation (a al Miura) and see what happens to her then.

@JoeBigs:

American education is by far so back woods that the children would be better suited learning in Japan.

I am not going to say there is nothing wrong with the U.S. school system but there are many more Nobel laurets from the U.S. education system pre capita than the Japan. Many of the top 25 universities in the world are in the U.S. and Todai ranked 64th last time I checked. Most of the scholars in MIT, Michigan State, Stanford, Yale, Harvard etc. came out of U.S. schools. If the kids are diligent students they can learn in the U.S. as well as in Japan.
Cicada at 11:06 PM JST - 8th October

techall:

She negotiated an 800,000USD settlement on condition she did not take the children out of the U.S.

Why do you like to repeat the homewrecker's tall tales? Read the documents instead. The "condition" for remaining in Tennessee was alimony, monthly payments, and education money. All of which Noriko chose to forfeit.

You misguided Chris Savoie supporters cannot even get this straight.

There was no deception there.

Yeah, sure. She uproots the kids from Japan to live in a foreign country because she wants to live near her husband's lover, so that they can conspire to gain custody of her children. Perfectly easy for anyone to understand!

JoeBigs:

If he really loved his kids he would have moved his mistress to Japan and been there for them.

That's right. Chris Savoie shows no signs whatsoever of loving his kids. He does show signs of wanting to own them, wanting them to love him, and wanting the world to think he is a super-dad. And how funny that some people believe that.
amerijap at 05:33 AM JST - 9th October

OK, it's check-out time.

JoeBigs:

Very good point, but....hmmmm....but.... why did he take his family to Tenn and then after she arrives, he files for divorce???

Actually, it was she(Noriko) who filed for divorce, because she found it extremely difficult to live her life with the kids in the US. She and her-ex husband should have talked it through before they made an important life decision.

Hell, she did the right thing, she made him try to fight in her court......guess he lost!!!

With the exception that she failed to abide by the court order. Besides, I don't know what you mean by "he lost". It's not a mere win-lose game over the child custody.

Cicada:

Therefore, her violation of the American court order occurred while she was in Japan.

Ha. You're making a straw-man argument. Are you trying to say it's not a violation because it occurred in Japan?? Absolutely ridiculous! As long as you call it a "violation", you are admitting that what she did--choose not to go back to the US against the court order-- was WRONG. Yes, exactly! It's totally unlikely to make her innocent. It's a serious breach of legal contract. The state court made an order that clearly reflected on both Chris and Noriko's concerns and the legal constraints the Japanese law would inflict on Chris' visitation rights.

JoeBigs & Cicada:

I don't care how much you antagonize Chris and his new wife Amy and enjoy your ad-hominem arguments by creating the biased stories in your postings. You can do whatever you want because I don't see your points persuasive at all. They just don't go anywhere but distracting from the issue. No matter how much demeaning comments you make, it won't make his ex-wife 'innocent' in the first place.
DwightVanWinkle at 04:12 PM JST - 9th October

If anyone is still reading, I think I was wrong to say Japan was the home state of the kids for determining child custody. Even two days after they moved to Tennessee, the question became whether they had significant connections to Tennessee. I still think the mother was treated very unfairly by the father, and that this case is very different from the usual child abduction to Japan case. I also still think the mother deserves to believed when she said in March that she had never wanted to keep the father from seeking the children. And although this is in retrospect, I still think that this divorce did not belong in Tennessee because of assumptions about the mother, who is also a victim of the Japanese system. She's not the one who chose to marry into that system.
Cicada at 09:04 PM JST - 9th October

DwightVanWinkle:

If anyone is still reading, I think I was wrong to say Japan was the home state of the kids for determining child custody.

Well, if you are right this time, that's too bad, because it (Japan not considered home state in this case) is an indication of serious flaws with the Hague Convention.

I'd say the bigger this story becomes, the more resistance there will be to signing the Hague Convention. People like Chris could freely abuse the system by trapping spouses in foreign divorces.

I still think the mother was treated very unfairly by the father, and that this case is very different from the usual child abduction to Japan case.

I agree, and yet the bigger the story becomes, and the louder Chris and Amy wail, the more the case will be seen as representative. What a shame.
JoeBigs at 09:51 PM JST - 9th October

Holy molly Lucy, if you have an affair it is okay! Because your an American! Holly molly, amerijap says it is okay so it must be!!!!!LOL

amerijap at 05:33 AM JST - 9th October JoeBigs & Cicada: I don't care how much you antagonize Chris and his new wife Amy

Translation "Amy", the other woman with 3 kids, You know, the home wrecker..LOL

amerijap at 05:33 AM JST - 9th October No matter how much demeaning comments you make, it won't make his ex-wife 'innocent' in the first place.

Translation,"It does not matter if the husband lied steeled and cheated, he was right because he was an American!" Quick play "I'm proud to be an American" Before they can think!.......LOL

Please, the guy tried and failed to pull a fast one. You have to be a child not to see through his ploy. He failed to be a man and live up to his responsibilities as a husband and a father and now he is paying for this.

That is what is wrong with America these day, lots of big talkers but no real men. You can talk a big game,"Rush Limbough". But can not back it up,"put anyone who uses drugs in jail".

So before you leap, be a man, this putz should pay with time in prison! I hope he dances the dance and learns to be a man.

Sounds like he is a far right winger to me. All talk and no responsibility for his actions......Rush oh mighty.....LOL
amerijap at 01:46 AM JST - 10th October

JoeBigs:

You're totally out of control. No wonder you and your folks are simply wasting your time, making slandering and ridiculous comments rather than engaging in critical/rational discussion on the issue. Because, you simply don't like it. I don't care who the hell Chris and his new wife look like. And I'm not tolerating Chris of his attempt to grab his kids in Japan, either. I agree what happened to Chris and Noriko is NONE OF of Amy's damn business.

I know you're trying to make a point by bringing up his problem--how he treated his ex-wife while they were still in Japan. Yeah, I agree he should have been much more considerate of her needs while they were spending their lives in Japan. Because that's the reason why they ended up in divorce in the first place. But, that's quite another story from what the article says. You're just mixing them up, and making ridiculous comments about Chris and Amy in order to defend Noriko's innocence. And what does this have to do with "Rush Limbough", anyway?? You're are totally helpless.
amerijap at 02:07 AM JST - 10th October

DwightWanWinkle:

I still think the mother was treated very unfairly by the father, and that this case is very different from the usual child abduction to Japan case.

I totally agree with you. What we would like to know, apart from this issue, is how Chris' power and control play out in their family decisions and how they psychologically and physically(to some extent- but not sure how much) have affected Noriko in their marriage life. I suspect there ought to be the philosophical difference in child parenting and education between Noriko and Chris, which might possibly be the key factor that led to marital break-up. They lived in Japan for almost 15 years, so their marriage life out there should be the key, I think.
DwightVanWinkle at 11:16 AM JST - 10th October

Cicada said:

"Well, if you are right this time, that's too bad, because it (Japan not considered home state in this case) is an indication of serious flaws with the Hague Convention."

No, it's not. "Home state" is just one way to have jurisdiction - it means the state the children lived in for 6 consecutive months when the divorce was filed. Even two days later, the children were now in Tennessee because the mother brought them there.

There was now no "home state" under this law, because they had not been in Tennessee for 6 months. So the next test, "significant connections," applied. Both parents lived there and said they planned to keep living there, so I think a judge could say this test was met.

In hindsight, seeing what happened, it's easy to question whether this was a good decision. In the same way, it's easy to say the mother was lying in March because what she did in August. That's not fair and accurate though.

I still think the Tennessee divorce was unfair and a mistake, but if it had worked we would not be having this discussion and saying that the divorce should have been filed in Japan.

You're wrong that this case is an argument against the Hague Convention. If Japan had been part of it, this might not have happened. The bigger problem in this case is Japan's lack of enforcement of father's visitation rights. That's the problem in the Toland case also - his child is in Japan and always has been, so I don't even consider that an international abduction case.

The Hillman case is a good example of why Japan needs to join Hague. Sean Hillman was born in the U.S. and taken back to Japan. Hague would have provided a quick and sure process for getting him back to his country of habitual residence.

There are many parts of the Hague Convention that allow a country's courts a lot of flexibility, but it gives a presumption that the children will be returned quickly to limit the harm to them of removal from their habitual residence.

I think this Savoie case caused the children the harm that the Hague Convention is designed to prevent, by bringing them from Japan in an unstable situation. And then just as Tennessee was starting to become their habitual residence, they were taken back to Japan. In retrospect, the only way to do it was with the mother's cooperation, slowly. It couldn't be forced.
Cicada at 05:42 PM JST - 10th October

DwightVanWinkle:

There was now no "home state" under this law

That is one of the flaws. Doh.

You're wrong that this case is an argument against the Hague Convention. If Japan had been part of it, this might not have happened.

I'm wrong because this "might not have happened"? lol. You cannot give any concrete reason why it would not have happened. And if it did, it would have been even worse for Noriko.

the Toland case...The Hillman case

Why are you citing a couple of more cases, when you have claimed that the Savoie case is not typical? You need to present the entire data of all cases, to show that the Savoie case is not typical, and to show whatever else it is you are trying to show.

I think this Savoie case caused the children the harm that the Hague Convention is designed to prevent, by bringing them from Japan in an unstable situation.

You are making a valiant effort to constructively connect the Savoie case to an argument about the Hague Convention. But you really have no reason to believe that the Hague Convention would have helped the Savoie children; quite possibly it would have meant much deeper harm.

As it is, the Japanese are right not to sign the Hague Convention. When people manage to figure out how it should be modified to avoid grotesque incidents of abuse, maybe Japan would sign.

Meanwhile, you and anyone else trying to advance the Hague Convention issue based on the Savoie case are making a giant mistake.
DwightVanWinkle at 01:19 AM JST - 11th October

Politically, the Savoie case may or may not hurt the Hague Convention issue. I think it would have helped because the father would have had less reason for fear of his wife's going back to Japan, and thus oppressive measures such as seizure of children's passports would not have occurred. But the bigger problem in the Savoie case was that Japan's family law does not ensure fathers' visitation. I don't think that justified a Tennessee divorce, but it was the justification. I think such reforms to Japanese family law would be good for Japanese fathers as well, and Prime Minister Hatoyama agrees.
DwightVanWinkle at 06:33 AM JST - 11th October

Lack of "home state" is not a flaw. It's a design feature to account for as many situations as possible. Google UCCJEA.
Cicada at 04:11 PM JST - 11th October

DwightVanWinkle:

But the bigger problem in the Savoie case was that Japan's family law does not ensure fathers' visitation. I don't think that justified a Tennessee divorce, but it was the justification.

I agree with you that a Tennesse divorce was not justified. And yet, as you say, "it was the justification". The problem here is not that Japan didn't sign the Hague convention, but rather that American courts unilaterally are making decisions that penalize the citizens of countries that did not sign, or countries that do not have domestic laws/enforcement similar to America.

Since when can one country alter its judiciary decisions regarding foreigners, based on whether or not the foreigners' country has signed a particular treaty, or based on what laws/enforcement are like in the foreign country?

You've touched on the real issue here: the Tennessee　court should have made all its decisions based on American law, not based on international politics.

Still, the American judge did give primary custody to Noriko, choosing to use alimony and monthly payments as a means of "persuading" her to remain in America. In some ways, the judge's decision can be seen as very fair, although I wonder why Chris Savoie should not pay alimony now, if Noriko agrees to let him have visitation 2 weekends per month in Japan.

Unfortunately, the behavior of Chris and Amy was so abusive that Noriko decided to forfeit the alimony and go back home to Japan.