My ex-wife and I have joint custody of our two kids. Despite the fact that we have been divorced for six years and she is remarried, she is determined not to allow me to move on. I am engaged and we are planning a fall wedding in the Caribbean. Obviously, I very much want our children to be a part of the wedding, but my ex refuses to cooperate in getting them passports. She claims there is no urgency and our children can wait until they are adults to get their own passports.
Our children are 17 and 15 so if I have to, I guess we can put the wedding off for three years but it seems like there should be some way around this. Can I force her to cooperate?
First, you don’t have to wait that long. A child can apply for a passport at the age of 16 — not 18. Federal regulations require a child age 16 or over to appear in person along with their passport application as part of the process just like any adult. If your ex does not know the child is applying, in theory she cannot prevent it. If she does know, she can file a written objection to the issuance of the passport and the passport will not issue. So, you are left with a moral dilemma here. Do you ask your children to hide this from their mom? Probably not a good parenting choice here. And at some point, she will learn what you have done because you will need to tell her when you are actually taking the kids out of the country for the trip. At that point, she is likely to make your life as difficult as possible because you have already encouraged the children to lie to her about the passports.
The alternative, which is more expensive but frankly the right way to do this, is to file a complaint for modification with the court, asking for sole legal custody for the sole purpose of obtaining passports for your children. With such an order, you can apply for their passports with just one parent’s signature, meaning her cooperation is unnecessary. She may argue that you have some sort of malintent with regard to the children and permanent removal. However, a destination wedding is not likely to be a stage for an international kidnapping. Before you finalize your destination, you should check to see if the country where you plan to marry is a signatory of the Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction and if so, check with the Department of State to make sure the country is not on the “non-compliant” list. Knowing this ahead of time will help negate any argument she makes.
Finally, if she pushes this to a trial, ask the judge to order her to pay your fees for her failure to reasonably allow you to move on with your life despite her having done so.
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