Decision of the Court of Cassation, I Civil Section, No. 16904 of 17 July 2015

The Court of Cassation decided on the appeal against a decision of the Juvenile Court in Rome concerning the international abduction of three minors. For the Court of Cassation, the decision of the Juvenile Court was wrong in asserting that there was not sufficient evidence that the children were ‘habitual residents’ in the USA (a key concept of The Hague Convention of 1980, Article 4), a country where they had lived with their parents for a long time. On other hand, the Juvenile Court’s decision of denying authorization for their return was correct, because after separation among the parents, and due to other particular circumstances, there were serious grounds to believe that return in the U.S.A. was susceptible to expose the children to physical or psychological harm or otherwise place them in an intolerable situation (Article 13 of The Hague Convention).