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I almost never post, though I read addictively every day, but I have my own story about the State Debt and this messy business! Three years ago, I moved to Sweden with my husband because we hadn't gotten the hitches worked out with his worker's permit (he is a Swedish citizen, married to a US one, with a daughter who is a US citizen, born in the US, and had a job, etc, but since he wasn't the sort of immigrant that was the most appealing to the power's that be, they messed up our application, didn't take any blame, and left us hanging for five months!) for what was presumably going to be a few months until we got the permits worked out. Once here, he decided he wanted us to stay here, and things fell rapidly aprt in our marriage (no flames please, I tried my best, but he was a really rotten husband and a lot of really crappy things went down between us!) So, after giving him a year of warnings that I was desperate toleave, to get marriage counselling, to try and work things out (all of these were things he wasn't interested in!) I nade the very hard and miserable decision to go back to the US with my daughter. I consulted a lawyer in the US, and was told that he could invoke the Hague Convention against kidnapping on me, and had six months to do it. Over the next five months, I contacted him regularly, trying to work out an agreement with custody, so that my daughter and I could remain in the US, and he could have lots of visitation (my daughter was two when we moved back, and he had never spent one single hour with her that I wasn't there, because he said she was too much of a pest). This was not good enough, and five and a half months later (thought I was going to be home free!) I came home from work and had a letter from the US State Department telling me the rules on kidnapping. Now, I do want to remind you all that I wasn't trying to keep my daughter from my husband, I just knew that I was her primary caregiver, and that I couldn't work in Sweden (don't speak the language, and it is hard to get a job here, anyway!). So, after hours and hours of consultation with the State Dept a lawyer in Sweden and a lawyer in the US, I realized that I had no rights, and that my country was going to send me back to Sweden. The State Dept was going to find my husband a wonderful lawyer in the US, and I was going to have to pay the costs. My lawyer here told me that I would be looking at upwards of 60,000 dollars to even begin the fight, and it just wasn't possible (as he would most likely win, in any case.) Now, the technicality was that my daughter lived in Sweden for ONE month longer than she had in the US, so the custody was to be arranged in Sweden. And Sweden is across the board 50-50 custody. Please, don't think I don't want my daughter to have a great relationship with this guy, he is her dad, but I didn't want to move to a place where I can't support myself, and have no family for help. However, I moved back here in March, and am taking Swedish lessons (I am the only non-Iraqui or Bosnian in my class, and let me tell you, Clinton's War has made many more enemies than Bush's!) and living off of the Swedish welfare system. And now that we are here (and have been for almost four months!) my husband has had my daughter to spend the night with him SIX times (he is supposed to have her six times every two weeks, but it cuts into his reclaimed bachelor lifestyle, and she is a difficult three year old!) I am pretty sad about it, because every where I go, I am treated pretty badly by at least one person since I am an American (I had some guy throw a table covered with drinks on me one night because I refused to discuss the war--he was such a rabid lefty, it didn't seem worth the time!). The sad part is that that Sweden has one of the biggest track records of violating the same agreement with custody disputes, and there are tons of Americans who can't get their kids out of Sweden even though the custody was settled in US courts. So, there is my story, written even though I am sure that most of the replies will be that I obviously didn't try hard enough to keep my marriage working! (And I actually did, my parents, who are as right wing as they get, begged me to come back when they heard the stories!) Custody disputes are rotten, and since I couldn't possibly give up my daughter, I am stuck here for the next nine years (she can decide where she wants to live when she is twelve). I am soooo not a fan of the State Dept!!!