Mother who kept children after vacation to Jamaica ordered to return them to Britain

A mother who brought her two young children from the United Kingdom to Jamaica on what she told their father was a one-month vacation, but later enrolled them in school, has been ordered to return them to Britain by May 16.

Justice Andrea Martin-Swaby ruled that the mother's retention of the children in Jamaica was unlawful under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, to which both Jamaica and the United Kingdom are contracting states.

The children - identified only by initials as GL, aged five, and G-JL, aged two - were born in the United Kingdom and had lived there from birth until July 27, 2025, when their mother brought them to Jamaica, having told the father the trip would last one month. The father consented to that visit but did not consent to what followed. 

The man is identified in the judgment as GBL and the woman as SAM. 

The mother never returned and enrolled the older child in school. According to the court judgment, when the father raised objections in September 2025, she argued he had tacitly accepted the arrangement by failing to voice disapproval when she first floated the idea of staying on. 
 

However, the court rejreced those arguments. "Even if I were to say that the Claimant's (father) failure to comment may have been interpreted that he voiced no objection," Justice Martin-Swaby wrote, "his failure to comment is incapable of amounting to consent."

The father initiated proceedings in February 2026, within twelve months of the children's removal, a timeline that proved crucial for the case.  
 

Under Article 12 of the Hague Convention, incorporated into Jamaican law through the Children (Guardianship and Custody) Amendment Act 2017, a court is obligated to order the prompt return of a child wrongfully removed or retained where proceedings are brought within one year of that removal.

"I have a duty to order their return," Justice Martin-Swaby stated in the judgment, which was handed down on April 30. The case was heard on March 27.

The mother, who appeared without legal representation, sought to resist the return order on two grounds: that sending the children back would expose them to grave risk of harm, and that the older child wished to remain in Jamaica with her. 
 

On the first ground, she pointed to the father's living arrangements - a two-bedroom flat shared with an adult daughter diagnosed with dyslexia and autism - and to the precariousness of the father's immigration status, which she said would be undermined once she filed for divorce.

The court found those concerns fell well short of the legal threshold. 
 

Applying the UK Supreme Court's standard, Justice Martin-Swaby noted that the risk must be "grave", not merely real, and that there was no allegation of physical or verbal abuse, no suggestion that the father had ever posed a threat to the children, and no evidence that his adult daughter represented any danger to them.

A Child Protection and Family Services Agency report confirmed that GL had said she enjoyed Jamaica and wished to stay. However, the judge found that did not rise to the level of a formal objection under the Convention, and added that even if it did, a five-year-old had not reached the age and maturity at which such views should be determinative.

The court ordered the mother to surrender the children's travel documents to the Jamaica Central Authority by May 8, and to hand the children to the father or his representative at the Central Authority's offices by May 14 - unless the parties agree to the mother accompanying them to the United Kingdom within the court's timeline.

The father is to bear the cost of the return airfare.

The couple met in Jamaica while the woman was enrolled at law school. Their relationship developed and they married on August 20, 2021, in Jamaica, by which time their first child had already been born. The woman, a UK citizen who had migrated to Britain at age 12, had continued living there throughout the relationship, with the man joining her and their daughter in the United Kingdom in 2022. The family lived together there until their separation in June 2025.

The father was represented by attorney-at-law Judith Cooper- Batchelor instructed by Chambers Bunny and Steer law firm. 

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