A recent custody case involving an Italian businessman and a Taiwanese flight attendant surnamed Chan (詹) over their eight-year-old daughter raises some interesting questions.
The Taipei District Court in January ruled that the father had sole parental rights and ordered Chan to present the child on March 14. After the child refused to be taken from her school that day, Chan appealed to the Constitutional Court, requesting a stay.
The law that the Taipei District Court has adduced for its ruling is the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which could become a focal point in the Constitutional Court procedure.
To prevent cases of international child abduction, the Hague convention ensures the prompt return of children to determine the country in which that dispute should be adjudicated.
Time is essential in custody right disputes. If a case is dragged out to the point that a child has grown accustomed to one country, it would be distressing for them to return to another country and start over.
A fierce custody battle involving Taiwanese-Brazilian Wu Yi-hua (吳憶樺), also known as Iruan Ergui Wu, is a well-known example. Born to a Brazilian mother and a Taiwanese father, Wu came to Taiwan at the age of six, and was compelled to return to Brazil three years later when the Kaohsiung District Court ruled in his mother’s favor.
By this time, his uncle had enrolled him into an elementary school, where he had made friends, and could speak fluent Chinese and Taiwanese. Wu’s distraught face and strong reluctance to leave left a deep impression on the Taiwanese public.
As Taiwan does not have specific regulations regarding international child custody rights, there is necessity in the Taipei District Court’s adduction of the Hague convention.
Nonetheless, if the country of the child’s habitual residence does not offer reciprocal favorable treatment — meaning the country does not recognize verdicts or rulings by Taiwanese courts — there would be no guarantee that the parent could continue to have contact with the child in due course.
This could be problematic because the court might rule in favor of the Taiwanese parent to circumvent this uncertainty, potentially leading to further cases of child abduction.
Whether a nation should accede to the Hague convention is controversial. Japan faced strong domestic opposition before becoming a party to the convention.
Some people in the country think that Japanese women who lived abroad after marriage do not have the economic or social support necessary to help themselves, and would have difficulty accessing local legal resources.
With no one to turn to for help, the women’s actions to either bring the child back to Japan or remain in the foreign country are acts of desperation.
It would be highly inappropriate to regard child removal of this sort as illegal abduction.
Even though the Japanese government in 2011 signed the convention, which took effect in Japan on April 1, 2014, after a postponement, civilians still had qualms about whether the government could offer complete protection, such as providing legal translation, lawsuit support and training dedicated personnel to work on the cases.
From the example of the Taipei District Court’s adduction of the convention, it is apparent that Taiwan lacks domestic laws that could be applied in such cases.
To tackle the problem, lawmakers should take into account the dilemma, refer to overseas cases, draft necessary laws and articles, and facilitate cross-sector cooperation to prevent further instances of child abduction.
Wang Chang-kuo is a family judge at the Chiayi District Court.
Translated by Rita Wang
Victory in conflict requires mastery of two “balances”: First, the balance of power, and second, the balance of error, or making sure that you do not make the most mistakes, thus helping your enemy’s victory. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has made a decisive and potentially fatal error by making an enemy of the Jewish Nation, centered today in the State of Israel but historically one of the great civilizations extending back at least 3,000 years. Mind you, no Israeli leader has ever publicly declared that “China is our enemy,” but on October 28, 2025, self-described Chinese People’s Armed Police (PAP) propaganda
Chinese Consul General in Osaka Xue Jian (薛劍) on Saturday last week shared a news article on social media about Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks on Taiwan, adding that “the dirty neck that sticks itself in must be cut off.” The previous day in the Japanese House of Representatives, Takaichi said that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could constitute “a situation threatening Japan’s survival,” a reference to a legal legal term introduced in 2015 that allows the prime minister to deploy the Japan Self-Defense Forces. The violent nature of Xue’s comments is notable in that it came from a diplomat,
China’s third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, entered service this week after a commissioning ceremony in China’s Hainan Province on Wednesday last week. Chinese state media reported that the Fujian would be deployed to the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea and the western Pacific. It seemed that the Taiwan Strait being one of its priorities meant greater military pressure on Taiwan, but it would actually put the Fujian at greater risk of being compromised. If the carrier were to leave its home port of Sanya and sail to the East China Sea or the Yellow Sea, it would have to transit the
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom, sparked by the arrival of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, took the world by storm. Within weeks, everyone was talking about it, trying it and had an opinion. It has transformed the way people live, work and think. The trend has only accelerated. The AI snowball continues to roll, growing larger and more influential across nearly every sector. Higher education has not been spared. Universities rushed to embrace this technological wave, eager to demonstrate that they are keeping up with the times. AI literacy is now presented as an essential skill, a key selling point to attract prospective students.
RSS