The U.S. State Department referred a Venezuelan parent to our office in June 2023. He'd been the sole caretaker of his daughters for several years. One day, the mother asked to take the children to see her family, and he agreed. They disappeared. He suspected they were in the Tulsa area.
Our office investigated the situation and located the girls after extensive effort. We determined that the situation fit the criteria of the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction and prepared a petition.
Once the mother was served with the petition, she chose to contest the return of the children to their home country, so we had a trial. Over two days, Aaron Bundy proved that the children had been abducted without the father’s consent and shot down the mother's attempts to raise defenses through one witness after another. Within a matter of weeks from our initial engagement, the children were returned to their home country to be reunited with their father.
While the Venezuelan case was being prosecuted, a father from Greece found our office through the International Academy of Family Lawyers directory. He was involved in a divorce proceeding in Greece. His estranged wife had asked the Greek court for permission to move with their children to the United States, and her request had been denied. She absconded with the children anyway and brought them to Bentonville, Arkansas. Kathleen Egan led the prosecution of that case. She defeated a motion to dismiss and won a hotly contested trial on the merits in Arkansas. The entire period of time from client engagement to verdict was six weeks.
Bundy Law handles contested family law matters, including Hague child abduction cases, in Oklahoma and Arkansas.