Opinion ID: 806661
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Shared intentions of the parents

Text: As previously noted, our primary consideration in determining a child’s place of habitual residence is the shared intention of the child’s parents “at the latest time that their intent was shared.” Id. at 134. “[T]his is a question of fact in which the findings of the district court are entitled to deference, and we consequently review those findings for clear error.” Id. at 133. Under the deferential “clear error” standard, “[w]e will not upset a factual finding unless we are left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed.” Bessemer Trust 10 Co. v. Branin, 618 F.3d 76, 85 (2d Cir. 2010) (quoting White v. White Rose Food, 237 F.3d 174, 178 (2d Cir. 2001)). We have no such “definite and firm” conviction here. For the first three and one-half years of her life, Elena’s habitual residence was in Mexico: until she was brought to the United States in 2010, Elena had lived only in Mexico, apparently with the intention of both parents that their daughter would live in Mexico indefinitely. No argument has been made to the contrary. According to Rivera Castillo, however, as of April 2010 “it was the parties’ settled intention” that Elena “move . . . to the United States.” Appellant Br. at 12. This new intention, he argues, “negates the conclusion that Mexico continued to be her habitual residence.” Id. Rivera Castillo calls “clear error” the district court’s finding that the parents’ agreement that Elena would move to New York was conditioned upon Elena joining a household that included both her father and her mother. See A.A.M., 840 F. Supp. 2d at 637. In support, Rivera Castillo emphasizes that only he testified as to the specifics of the agreement to move the family to the United States, and that his testimony did not suggest that Elena’s habitual residence in America was contingent upon Asuncion Mota’s success in entering the country. Thus, when asked on cross-examination whether Asuncion Mota had consented to Rivera Castillo keeping Elena in the United States, even if Asuncion Mota did not join them, Rivera Castillo answered, “We never talked about there being any kind of condition.” Trial Tr. 105. In response to the district court’s query whether Rivera Castillo had “ever discuss[ed] with [Asuncion Mota] what would happen if the child came over and she did not,” Rivera Castillo answered, “We never talked about that.” Id. at 107. 11 Rivera Castillo also posits that Asuncion Mota offered “no evidence that her consent to Elena’s move to the United States was conditioned on her own ability to achieve entry into the United States.” Reply Br. at 10 (internal quotation marks omitted). He points out that the district court rejected as incredible Asuncion Mota’s account of the planned border crossing, and argues that there was no basis on which the district court could reasonably find that a condition attached to the plan for Elena to be brought to New York. We are not persuaded. Notwithstanding Rivera Castillo’s assertions and the district court’s rejection of the particulars of Asuncion Mota’s account of Elena’s border crossing, the record evidence sustains the district court’s factual finding as to the parties’ latest shared intention. See Krizek v. Cigna Grp. Ins., 345 F.3d 91, 100 (2d Cir. 2003) (“[C]lear error review . . . does not entitle us to second guess a district court’s . . . inferences” provided the inference drawn has “some evidentiary basis in the record”). Asuncion Mota was Elena’s primary caretaker for the first three and one-half years of her daughter’s life, and, as the district court found, Elena “was raised in a loving, supportive home in Mexico.” A.A.M., 840 F. Supp. 2d at 638. Asuncion Mota proved herself a devoted mother and was persistent in her efforts to retrieve Elena after the plan fell through. After her multiple failed attempts to enter the United States, and having served a seventy-five-day term of incarceration, Asuncion Mota demanded that Rivera Castillo return Elena to Mexico. She contacted Mexican authorities to obtain help in recovering her child. She instituted this 12 lawsuit, and has continued to prosecute it from Mexico in hopes of reuniting with Elena. During the bench trial, Elena was put on the phone so that she could listen to and speak with her mother. As the district court observed, Elena “was obviously delighted to hear her mother’s voice,” and “[i]t was clear that a warm relationship continued to exist between the two.” Id. at 628. The impression of Asuncion Mota that emerges from the record is that of a committed parent who has sought to keep her child close to her. The record is devoid of any suggestion that Asuncion Mota intended permanently to abandon Elena. And, in fact, Asuncion Mota testified that she never intended that Elena would live permanently in the United States, and that she had only helped smuggle Elena across the Arizona border to allow her father to visit with her for a few hours. Although the district court rejected the particulars of this account as not credible, it permissibly relied on the core of Asuncion Mota’s testimony, to the effect that she always intended for Elena to be by her side. The district court thus reasonably inferred from Asuncion Mota’s actions, the proffered testimony, and personal observations that it was more likely than not that Asuncion Mota intended for Elena to live in the United States only if she herself could join the household and continue to raise her child. On review, we are not “left with the definite and firm conviction” that the district court was mistaken. Bessemer Trust Co., 618 F.3d at 85. We therefore decline to disturb its finding. Asuncion Mota’s intention that Elena live in the United States only if she, as mother, were able to join Elena there is dispositive of our determination of Elena’s 13 habitual residence. If Rivera Castillo shared this conditional intention with his wife, Elena’s habitual residence would lie in Mexico, because the condition was not satisfied. Were Asuncion Mota unable to join her daughter in America, Elena’s stay would be temporary, and the daughter would rejoin her mother in Mexico, her habitual residence. And if (as he says) Rivera Castillo did not share his wife’s understanding, Elena’s habitual residence would still lie in Mexico: if the parents did not agree that Elena would live indefinitely in America regardless of her mother’s presence, it cannot be said the parents “shared an intent” in April 2010 that America would be Elena’s state of habitual residence. Thus, the “latest time” (in Gitter’s phrase) in which Asuncion Mota and Rivera Castillo shared an intent regarding Elena’s habitual residence would have occurred earlier—before they decided to have Elena and her mother join Rivera Castillo in New York, and when both parents intended that Elena would live indefinitely in Mexico. See Gitter, 396 F.3d at 134. b. The child’s acclimatization to her new surroundings Although the shared intentions of Elena’s parents strongly favor a conclusion that Mexico is Elena’s state of habitual residence for Convention and ICARA purposes, Gitter advises that we must also consider whether “evidence points unequivocally to the conclusion that [Elena] has become acclimatized to [her] new surroundings and that [her] habitual residence has consequently shifted” to the United States. Id. at 133. In analyzing this factor, we are mindful that courts should be “slow to infer” that a child’s acclimatization “trumps the parents’ shared 14 intent.” Id. at 134. It would frustrate the objectives of the Convention if a parent or guardian could secure an advantage in an anticipated custody dispute merely by whisking the child away to a foreign land, and retaining her there long enough to amass evidence of the child’s acclimatization to the new location. See id. Therefore, only in “relatively rare circumstances” in which a child’s degree of acclimatization is “so complete that serious harm . . . can be expected to result from compelling his [or her] return to the family’s intended residence” might we conclude that the child’s habitual residence has shifted to his or her new location. Id.; see also Mozes v. Mozes, 239 F.3d 1067, 1081 (9th Cir. 2001) (“The question . . . is not simply whether the child’s life in the new country shows some minimal degree of settled purpose, but whether we can say with confidence that the child’s relative attachments to the two countries have changed to the point where requiring return to the original forum would now be tantamount to taking the child out of the family and social environment in which its life has developed.” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). The evidence in this case in no way suggests that returning Elena to Mexico would subject her to serious harm. Elena spent the first three and one-half years of her life in a “loving, supportive home in Mexico,” A.A.M., 840 F. Supp. 2d at 638, and a “warm relationship continue[s] to exist between” her and her mother, id. at 628. Indeed, the district court expressly found that Elena “faces no risk of harm, physical or psychological, upon her return” to Mexico. Id. at 638. 15 We recognize that Elena has lived for the past two years in New York. But this duration of time is not nearly so great that we could presume that returning her to Mexico would expose her to the “severe harm” one associates with a child’s “deprivation of [her] acclimatized life.” Cf. Gitter, 396 F.3d at 134 (observing that “a child who has spent fifteen years abroad . . . would predictably suffer severe harm if returned to the state he had experienced only at birth,” and that this harm “might overcome” the parents’ last shared intent). This is particularly so given the evidence of the loving home with her mother that awaits Elena in her native country. We are compelled to note, also, that her uncertain immigration status, as well as the admittedly undocumented status of her father, places an additional obstacle on the path to determining that a supervening acclimatization has occurred. For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the evidence adduced before the district court is sufficient to support the district court’s finding that when last they shared an intent about Elena’s residence, Elena’s parents intended that she live in Mexico—a factor we assign controlling weight in fixing the state of the child’s habitual residence. The evidence in this case does not point unequivocally to the conclusion that Elena has become acclimatized to her new surroundings and that her habitual residence has shifted to the United States as a consequence. Because Elena was a habitual resident of Mexico at the time Rivera Castillo retained Elena in the United States, the first prong of Gitter is satisfied. 16